Political Uncertainty Looms Over PCAOB as SEC Leadership Shifts, announces the headline of a recent article on the website of the New York State Society of CPAs. Here are some extracts: And then, as subsequently reported by the Financial Times: Canadian Accountant weighed in: As we’ve seen most recently in the area of climate-related disclosure,…

The Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame has announced its latest batch of inductees: In the “founders of the profession” category, we have R. Douglas (Doug) Thomas, who passed away in 2004: “a transformative figure in Canadian and international accounting, known for his visionary leadership and commitment to advancing financial reporting and auditing standards. Over a…

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency recently gave us a notable example of deficient accounting-related record-keeping… …and the Trump administration continues in its uniquely charmless way to provide material falling within the broad scope of this blog. You know how we’ve all believed, or claimed to believe, that financial and economic information is useful to…

On climate, will the real Mark Carney please stand up? requested the title of a recent Globe and Mail article. Written by Jeffrey Jones, it surveys the record and current stance of Canada’s new Prime Minister in a number of climate- and sustainability-related areas. The following passage relates to corporate reporting: Note the reference in…

The IFRS Foundation recently issued its 2024 annual report, including the audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2024. Among the items of interest: in 2024 the Foundation secured new multi-year philanthropic grants totaling £7.0 million for ISSB-related activities, compared with £2.9 million in 2023; it seems that some or all of these…

Around 2007, when Canada was heading toward IFRS adoption, I helped edit a book comparing then-Canadian GAAP to the international standards, and I recall the lead author inserting a sentence into the preface to the effect that although the United States hadn’t yet moved to adopt IFRS, the climate was such that it wouldn’t be…

A cringingly awful (but at least provocative) column by Gus Carlson in The Globe and Mail posits that “The new hate for Elon Musk is childish and hypocritical.” The skepticism isn’t so new on this blog actually. But anyway, Carlson’s article surveys some of the recent anti-Tesla activism, and goes on: But the anti-Musk outrage,…

It’s possible to appreciate the broad purpose of IAS 38 Intangible Assets while still finding it inherently rather peculiar… For example, anyone who’s had to spend time puzzling over how an amount of purchase price consideration might be allocated between, say, customer lists, marketing rights, patents and/or goodwill will appreciate that such exercises are often…

It’s darkly amusing (sort of) that the highest-profile recent example of deficient accounting-related record-keeping comes from the ever-wondrous heart of American democracy, as summarized here by the New York Times: The sloppiness is so pervasive and reckless that it’s plain no serious effort was made to verify the numbers before posting them, that the DOGE…

In a recent edition of his Inside Standard Setting, Armand Capisciolto, Chair of Canada’s Accounting Standards Board, pulled off one of the all-time memorable segues: Well, of course it does. You may recall that the exposure draft focuses in particular on how an entity determines under IAS 37 that it has a present obligation (legal…