Among the easier lessons to extract from the Trump presidency (not that any of them were needed, certainly not at such a wretched cost) is the inadequacy of social media, and of Twitter in particular, as a medium for conveying any message more complex than “I like cake”… I’ve written here several times about my…
Dr. Al Rosen is clearly one of the most high-profile accountants in Canada, and has been for years. No one has talked and written so consistently about the inherent limitations of financial statements, or tried so hard to shake users out of their potential complacency. Anyone who keeps track of Rosen’s articles and other public…
A European example of a significant judgment made under IFRS 10 As part of its activities, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) organizes a forum of enforcers from 30 different European jurisdictions, all of whom carry out monitoring and review programs similar to those carried out here by the Canadian Securities Administrators. ESMA recently…
The UK’s Big Innovation Centre recently released a Policy Report resulting from its “The Purposeful Company” project. The background to the report is as follows: “The Task Force is a consortium of FTSE companies, investment houses, business schools, business consultancy firms and policy makers. It has been examining how the governance and capital markets environment…
As we’ve discussed in many previous articles, the IASB has issued IFRS 15, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2018. The new standard is built around a five-step framework, the second step being to identify the performance obligations in the contract. A performance obligation is: A promise…
The US FASB has issued an exposure draft of changes to the disclosure requirements for inventory, with comments due by March 13, 2017. Here’s how they summarize the proposals, which would be applied prospectively: “The amendments in this proposed Update would modify the disclosure requirements for inventory. The following additional disclosures would be required …for…
A high-profile public dispute about technical accounting… Here’s a story that appeared in the Toronto Star last year: “Depending on whom you believe, Ontario’s deficit last year was either $3.5 billion or $5 billion. And the province’s net debt was either $294.5 billion or $305.2 billion. Finance Minister Charles Sousa and Treasury Board President Liz…
The IASB recently published an “Implementation Update” on IFRS 16 Leases In the document, “four IASB Members discuss messages they have heard from stakeholders about IFRS 16 implementation over the last year and give advice to companies implementing the new Standard.” Much of this messaging really only consists of emphasizing various bits of the standard,…
Rising to the challenge of short-termism is a recent report issued by FCLT Global FCLT Global (Focusing Capital on the Long-Term), with a membership of asset owners and managers and corporations, is “dedicated to developing practical tools and approaches that encourage long-term behaviors in business and investment decision-making”. The introduction to the latest report sums…
The CFA Institute has issued two related papers on non-GAAP measures, Investor Uses, Expectations and Concerns on Non-GAAP Financial Measures (NGFMs) and Bridging the Gap- Ensuring Effective Non-GAAP and Performance Reporting. Here in part is how the first paper sums up its findings: “Our survey results establish that company-reported NGFMs are useful for investors who apply them…
John Hughes IFRS Blog 