The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) recently issued a Request for Information Consultation on Agenda Priorities, to seek feedback on its priorities for its next two-year work plan. The document is open for comment until September 1, 2023. The ISSB has identified four potential projects in particular: “three sustainability-related research projects—1) biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services;…

The financial reporting challenges arising from Covid 19 may largely be receding into the past… …but the aftermath yields its own issues. One of these is the new prevalence of hybrid-work arrangements under which companies provide their employees with more flexibility to work partly in the office and partly remotely. Here’s the background to an…

As we covered here, the IASB issued Property, Plant and Equipment: Proceeds before Intended Use, a limited-scope amendment to IAS 16. It focuses on one of the examples provided in IAS 16.17 of “directly attributable costs” of an item of property, plant and equipment, which are included within the amount recognized as an asset. Prior…

Canadian securities regulators propose changes to corporate governance disclosure practices and guidelines, announces a recent news release. Here’s an extract: The proposals use the term “identified group” to mean “a group of individuals with a shared personal characteristic, whose representation on the issuer’s board or in its executive officer positions has been identified by the…

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 UK Endorsement Board recently issued Accounting for Intangibles; UK Stakeholders’ Views. The report “summarizes the views of UK stakeholders and relevant literature about the accounting for intangibles in accordance with IFRS Accounting Standards.” The Board “will use these findings as an evidence base in its future work on intangibles, including future research work, developing…

The IASB mentioned a while ago that to “reduce diversity in practice and assist with the consistent application of the derecognition requirements in IFRS 9, (it) decided to clarify that for the derecognition of financial assets (except for ‘regular way’ transactions) and financial liabilities, an entity applies settlement date accounting”… The exposure draft to make all…

This is from a recent SEC press release: As noted, the company did provide risk factor disclosure on this general area (sure, such disclosures are often skimmed over as “boilerplate,” but they’re there): Of course, any amount of generalized anything-could-happen disclosure can’t compensate for sustained underlying bad practice. Was this such a case? SEC commissioner…

The IASB recently added a project to its work plan to explore whether and how companies can provide better information about climate-related risks in their financial statements. Here’s how the news release summed it up: At the same time, the IASB issued two separate articles with “connectivity” in the title. Here’s an extract from one of them:…

A recent New York Times article by David Gelles explored “How Environmentally Conscious Investing Became a Target of Conservatives.” Here are some extracts: You know what else is a direct assault on the heart and soul of any economy? Irreversible environmental degradation and an unsustainable society, that’s what! The article has plenty more, with our…