Modern sounds in fair value measurement

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued a report on Review of Fair Value Measurement on the IFRS financial statements The report “builds on a desktop review of the 2015 financial statements of a sample of 78 issuers from different industries, and on the evidence from enforcement actions taken by European enforcers relating to…

Accounting for revenue – it really is a whole new model!

As we’ve discussed many times in the past, the IASB has issued IFRS 15, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2018. Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group recently considered the following issue relating to the application of IFRS 15: Entity A develops, manufactures and distributes innovative products. Product X…

Business combination brain freeze!

A European example of complexities in applying IFRS 3 Here’s another of the issues arising from extracts of enforcement decisions issued in the past by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) (for more background see here); this is from their 19th edition: The issuer owned Business E whose net assets amounted to CU 1.3M…

Losing money the Buffett way?- the coming storm in IFRS in Canada

Warren Buffett invests in Canada, but should you?, asks a recent New York Times column Here’s how it starts off: When Warren Buffett acts, investors notice. And after he took a roughly $300 million position last month in Home Capital Group, a troubled Canadian mortgage underwriter, some investors saw it as a vote of confidence not only in that…

Penn West – an indictment of IFRS?

The US SEC has filed charges against the Canadian entity Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (now renamed Obsidian Energy Ltd.) and three former senior accounting and finance personnel alleging violations of the antifraud, recordkeeping, internal controls, and reporting provisions of the federal securities laws arising from a multi-year accounting fraud. Penn West prepared the financial statements…

Summarizing the IFRS literature: the never-ending journey

On the University of Oxford business law blog, I came across a summary of a recent review of academic literature about IFRS adoption. Here’s the synopsis provided there: “If we had to summarize the development of the IFRS literature, the majority of early studies paint IFRS as bringing significant benefits to adopting firms and countries…