Issues arising in drafting the pre-ballot draft

The staff had identified three issues on which the Board's view was requested:

• Consolidation disclosures. The Board decided to add disclosures comparable to those in paragraph 41 of IAS 27(2008) Consolidated and Separate Financial Statements.
• Option to use IAS 39. The Board tentatively decided that an entity that elects to use IAS 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement instead of the two financial instruments sections in the IFRS for SMEs should make the disclosures required by the IFRS for SMEs rather than those required by IFRS 7 Financial Instruments: Disclosures. Board members were concerned that the disclosures in IFRS 7 were onerous for publicly-accountable entities that are financial institutions, and that to require them for entities without public accountability was likely to be burdensome. The Board preferred that, if an entity using this Standard chose to apply IAS 39, it should assess whether the disclosure required by that standard provided sufficient information to the users of the financial statements. Only then would a further fall-back to IFRS 7 be required. The Board asked the staff to prepare a comparison of the two sets of disclosures and circulate the comparison to Board members after the meeting. If Board members feel there is a significant omission in the disclosures in the pre-ballot draft, that issue will be raised at the May 2009 Board meeting.
• Example of measurement of a one-off provision. The Board decided not to add an example to the appendix to the section of the Standard on provisions that would illustrate a calculation of a provision for settlement of a lawsuit.

Name of the Standard

The Board has discussed the name on several occasions during its redeliberations. In March 2009, the Board agreed to raise the issue with the National Standard Setters (NSS) at their April 2009 meeting. After considering the various views it has received, the Board has decided that the name of the final standard will be International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs), as proposed in the exposure draft.