On the virtue of simplicity, or: grabbed in the fist and squeezed!

An interesting article in Canadian Accountant ponders Why accountants should spend less time on the numbers and more time explaining the results. Written by Philip Maguire, it notes that “The combination of historical and current valuation requirements in the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows have resulted in financial statements that are…

Disclosures on artificial intelligence, or: tone shift!

The Ontario Securities Commission recently released staff research that analyzes the frequency and sentiment of Canadian listed issuers’ references to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their financial disclosures. Here’s how the OSC’s news release summed it up: As indicated above, one of the more interesting aspects of the exercise is that it itself made use of AI: The…

Next on the Trumpian agenda: down with the audit?

We recently looked at the current moves in the United States toward eliminating the audit regulator, the Public Company Auditing Oversight Board… And as if that wasn’t enough, Francine McKenna recently posted the following on LinkedIn: She harked back to something she’d written in January 2019: Although one might react to that with intuitive horror,…

Less is more, and nothing at all is even more!

We recently looked at a think-piece on the virtue of simplicity and concision in financial reporting… …and to extend that train of thought, I came across an article titled Less is More in Standard-Setting, written by Peter Reilly , a non-executive director at the UK Endorsement Board. Here are some extracts: Well yes, but getting…

Equity accounting – it’s (still) time to say goodbye!

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 last year published some extracts from its confidential database of enforcement decisions…

The global business of accounting, or: your measurement, my crisis!

Let’s dip once more into the Inside Standard Setting blog of Armand Capisciolto, Chair of Canada’s Accounting Standards Board, and a recent post titled International Relationships Matter!: The references there are to accounting standard setting, this being the blog’s focus, but it could also be a tacit acknowledgement that disclosure-related standard setting is relatively more…