The Accounting Miscellany blog by Peter Clark (whom I thank upfront for inspiring the following big finish to the year) contained the following fascinating item: There is a strange but persistent rumour that IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements was written by Sir Henry Benson (later Lord Benson), the first chairman of the IASB’s predecessor, the International…

It’s time now for another collection of real-life IFRS-related tweets (or whatever they’re called now), presented here in their original form, with all typos, oddities and possible obscenities intact. I’ve been doing this for years, but it’s not as much fun as it used to be, given the sense of the extravagantly malign Elon Musk…

My last post, covering a recent discussion of carbon credits, prompted my friend Walter Ross to remind me of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “climate fiction” novel The Ministry for the Future, which among much else sets out a concept for a worldwide “carbon coin.” As it’s the holiday season, let’s spend a little time in a…

Canada’s “IFRS Accounting Standards Discussion Group” (recently renamed from the previously long-standing title of “IFRS Discussion Group”) recently discussed the accounting for the development of carbon credits by a renewable energy generator. To look at part of the discussion, consider a company with a solar energy facility that generates electricity to be sold into the…

As we covered here, the IASB recently called for stakeholder feedback to inform its review of the accounting standard for revenue from contracts with customers, IFRS 15. This is part of the regular post-implementation review process “to assess whether the effects of applying the new requirements on users of financial statements, preparers, auditors and regulators are…

Audit regulator says accounting firms still falling short, announced the headline of a recent Globe and Mail article. Here’s some of what it had say: One of Canada’s Big Four auditing firms has a significant number of problems in its work for the second consecutive year, the national industry regulator has found. In its mid-year…

As part of its activities, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) organizes a forum of enforcers from 38 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 published some extracts from its confidential database of enforcement decisions on…

The Ontario Securities Commission and Royal Bank of Canada recently reached a settlement under which the bank agreed to make a voluntary payment of $2,000,000 to the OSC. Arising out of the same conduct, the bank agreed to pay $2,000,000 to Québec’s Autorité des Marchés Financiers, and $8,000,000 to the United States SEC (although receiving…

For several years, David Letterman ran a segment called “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches,” in which stirring clips of, say, JFK declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner” and Bill Clinton’s ringing “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America” would be followed by the latest instance of George W. Bush mangling his words…

A recent tweet (or whatever they’re called now) seemed to sweep our whole profession into the modern technology-facilitated trash. It said: “What do the IFRS people know about running a bank? You don’t need such people to make financial statements – Chat GPT is there for such things…” Well, as I wrote here, ChatGPT itself…