November

Agenda for the December 2005 IASB meeting

30 Nov 2005

The IASB will hold its monthly Board meeting at its offices, 30 Cannon Street, London, on Tuesday to Friday, 13-16 December 2005. The agenda for the meeting is set out below. .

The IASB will hold its monthly Board meeting at its offices, 30 Cannon Street, London, on Tuesday to Friday, 13-16 December 2005. The agenda for the meeting is set out below.

Board Meeting Agenda

13-16 December 2005, London

Tuesday 13 December 2005 (Afternoon only)

Wednesday 14 December 2005 Thursday 15 December 2005 Friday 16 December 2005 (Morning Only)
  • Technical Plan

Measurement discussion paper may now be downloaded

30 Nov 2005

Our News Story of 17 November 2005 reported that the IASB has invited comment on a Canadian Discussion Paper Measurement Bases for Financial Reporting - Measurement on Initial Recognition.

The Discussion Paper is now available for download without charge from the IASB Website.

IAS Plus Newsletters for third quarter 2005 are posted

29 Nov 2005

The November 2005 IAS Plus newsletter has been published.

The newsletter reports on the 3rd quarter 2005 activities of the IASB, the IFRIC, and the IASC Foundation, and also on worldwide issues and events relating to international financial reporting. The Asia-Pacific edition has the same 24-page news content as the Global Edition plus five pages of accounting standards updates for the Asia-Pacific region. You will find all Past IAS Plus Issues Here.

EFRAG endorsement status reports

29 Nov 2005

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has begun publishing a report showing the status of endorsement, under the EU Accounting Regulation, of each IFRS, including standards, interpretations, and amendments.

We are grateful to EFRAG for giving us permission to post them:

We have made a separate page for EFRAG status reports. We will announce each update as a news item.

You can also find Official EC Information about the Status of Adoption on the European Commission's website.

 

Authority of published IFRIC agenda decisions

29 Nov 2005

The German Accounting Standards Board has published its view on the authority of IFRIC agenda decisions that IFRIC has begun publishing recently in IFRIC Update.

We thought that visitors to IAS Plus might find this guidance of interest:

A few months ago the IFRIC started to publish reasons for not taking an item on its agenda. Some of the items are rejected because they cannot be dealt with in an Interpretation, but potentially imply an amendment of the relevant Standards and are therefore referred to the IASB. Other items are not taken on the IFRIC agenda because they are part of an ongoing Board project and therefore should be dealt with in this project. Finally, some items are rejected because the IFRIC does not see the necessity of an Interpretation, i.e. the relevant Standard is clear and there is no significant diversity in practice. It is common that the accounting treatment suggested by constituents in their request for an IFRIC Interpretation is explicitly declined by the IFRIC in the published agenda decision. Examples for such statements that are sometimes (unofficially) referred to as 'Non-Interpretations' are the three agenda decisions published in the September issue of IFRIC Update 2005, pages 5-6.

This raises the question if these 'Non-Interpretations' have any authoritative character. Since the published final agenda decisions (including the 'Non-Interpretations') are preceded by the explicit statement that 'The following explanations are provided for information only, and do not change existing IFRS requirements' (see the August issue of IFRIC Update 2005, page 5), this seems to imply that the 'Non-Interpretations' do not have to be taken into account by preparers of financial statements. However, this does not seem to reflect the intention of the IFRIC properly. In fact, the Chairman of the IFRIC, Mr. Bob Garnett, said at the 4th Official IFRS Congress that took place on the 8 and 9 September 2005 in Berlin, Germany, that the level of authority of the published agenda decisions is comparable to the level of authority of Implementation Guidance that accompanies several Standards. While the Implementation Guidance is not part of the relevant Standard, it shows however, how the principles of IFRS have to be applied in the Standard. This means that 'Non-Interpretations' cannot be neglected by preparers of IFRS financial statements and it further seems to imply that a deviation from the statements in a 'Non-Interpretation' is only justified if a preparer can demonstrate that there are good reasons for doing so. In this way, the 'Non-Interpretations' can be labelled persuasive, but non-authoritative.

'The Brave New World of IFRS'

29 Nov 2005

We have posted an article titled The Brave New World of IFRS (PDF 71k) by Eva K.

Jermakowicz and Sylwia Gornik-Tomaszewski, published in the November 2005 issue of Financial Executive magazine. This article is copyright 2005 Financial Executives International and is posted here with the kind permission of FEI. FEI is a US-based organisation of 15,000 CFOs, VPs of finance, treasurers, controllers, and other senior financial executives.

National/regional pages updated

29 Nov 2005

We have updated the following pages on IAS Plus to reflect accounting standards activity during the third quarter of 2005: Australia China Hong Kong Japan Malaysia Singapore Thailand .

We have updated the following pages on IAS Plus to reflect accounting standards activity during the third quarter of 2005:

EFRAG comments on IFRS 3 proposals

28 Nov 2005

In June 2005, the IASB and the FASB jointly published exposure drafts that would amend their business combinations standards (IFRS 3 and SFAS 141, both titled Business Combinations).

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) has submitted to the IASB a comment letter expressing overall disagreement with the proposals from both a practical and a conceptual point of view. EFRAG's view:

Having evaluated the proposals as a whole in the light of the comments received on the draft comment letter we issued in early August, we do not support the proposals in the EDs. That is because we believe that the proposed approach does not produce more useful information than the current IFRS 3; indeed in many respects we believe that it will have the opposite effect. In addition it will create major practical implementation issues. We also believe that it is inappropriate to introduce such radical and untested concepts through revision to specific standards at a time when the conceptual framework is under active review.

Our recommendation to the IASB and FASB is therefore that they should concentrate for the time being on simply doing what they set out to do, i.e. converging the existing standards to the better accounting solution, which we believe to be IFRS 3 (subject perhaps to some minor improvements to achieve convergence and to address certain practical aspects linked with the application of the acquisition method).

EFRAG also expressed concerns regarding the related IASB proposals to amend IAS 19, IAS 27, and IAS 37:

Summarising our concerns, we believe the proposed changes:

  • 1. Are not in compliance with the current framework with regard to the recognition of assets and liabilities and should not be introduced until there has been an opportunity to have a full debate on them as part of the framework review;
  • 2. Introduce a default category for non-financial liabilities without sufficient analysis or understanding of the range of liabilities that might as a result be brought within the scope of the standard; and
  • 3. Introduce a high degree of subjectivity particularly for the measurement of low probability, but potentially significant, 'one-off' liabilities thereby reducing the reliability of information overall.
Click for:

Cooperation plan among EU regulators

27 Nov 2005

The Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS), the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors (CEIOPS) and the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) have signed a joint protocol to foster co-operation and coordination in the areas of regulation, policy, information exchange and other tasks with a common interest.

The practical objectives of the joint protocol are to:
  • share information in order to ensure compatible sector approaches are developed;
  • exchange experiences which can facilitate supervisors' ability to cooperate;
  • produce joint work or reports to relevant EU Institutions and Committees;
  • reduce supervisory burdens and streamline processes; and
  • ensure the basic functioning of the three Committees develops along parallel lines.
Click for (PDF 34k) and (PDF 33k).

Australia proposes a new approach to interpretations

26 Nov 2005

The Australian Accounting Standards Board has invited comments on a proposed new model for developing interpretations of Australian Accounting Standards, most of which are equivalent to IFRSs.

Under the proposals:
  • The AASB will assume direct responsibility for developing Interpretations and the Urgent Issues Group (UIG) will be disbanded.
  • An Interpretations Agenda Committee would be formed with the purpose of recommending how an issue proposal is dealt with, for example:
    • whether an interpretation is warranted;
    • whether it is a purely domestic issue or whether it should be referred to the International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC) of the IASB.
  • An advisory panel chaired by the AASB Chairman or another AASB member will be formed on each issue where guidance may be necessary.
The AASB is seeking comments on its proposals by 18 January 2006. Click for (PDF 39k). The invitation to comment may be downloaded from AASB's Website.

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