EFRAG has now issued a letter to the IASB on the comments on the Paper Financial Statement Presentation, which complements the feedback on the meeting with European constituents published in February 2011 and completes the overall picture of the European views on the IASB's tentative decisions in respect of the Financial Statement Presentation project.

Please click for EFRAG press release (link to EFRAG website) which contains a link to the letter.

The IASB has identified five key aspects that should be reflected in the strategic approach towards a future agenda:

• the IFRS community has become more diverse
• the market environment has become more complex
• there are a number of changes that require implementation
• the quality and relevance of the standards needs to demonstrated
• the risk that practices related to implementation and adoption will diverge.

Consequently, the IASB thinks that its future work should fall into broad categories: 'Developing financial reporting' and 'Maintaining' existing IFRSs. Below is an excerpt from the agenda consultation document concerning five strategic areas driving the work of the IASB in those categories:

 

Developing financial reporting Strengthening the consistency of IFRSs by completing the update of the conceptual framework, and improving the usability of financial reports through the development of a presentation and disclosure framework. Investing in research and addressing the strategic issues for financial reporting to aid future standard-setting and to develop further the IASB's vision of the future shape of financial reporting, including exploring the interaction of IFRSs with integrated reporting. Filling gaps in the IFRS literature by undertaking standards-level projects, i.e. developing new IFRSs or making major amendments. Maintaining existing IFRSs Obtaining a better understanding of operational issues of new IFRSs and major amendments through conducting post-implementation reviews. Improving the consistency and quality of the application of IFRSs by responding to implementation needs arising from the revised set of IFRSs, through the use of targeted, narrow-scope improvements to IFRSs, including consideration of the completeness and consistency of integration of XBRL with IFRSs.

The IASB makes the agenda consultation document and several supporting documents available on its website (all links below to the IASB's website):

• IASB press release
• Open letter by Hans Hoogervorst, Chairman of the IASB (available in ten languages)
• Agenda consultation document (PDF 308k)

There will also be a live webcast on the IASB's agenda consultation on 3 August 2011.

Comments on the consultation document are required by 30 November 2011.

On 28 July 2010, the Nigerian Federal Executive Council announced a 'Road Map' for Nigeria's staged adoption of IFRS, commencing from 1 January 2012. The necessary law to enact the changes, the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria Act 2011, had previously been passed by the Nigerian legislature, but had not been signed into law by the Nigerian President.

With the Nigerian President signing the act into law, the final processes for Nigeria's adoption of IFRS can now be put in place. The effect of the law is to create a new Financial Reporting Council, incorporating and replacing the existing Nigerian Accounting Standards Board (NASB), which will issue and regulate accounting, actuarial, valuation and auditing standards.

Click for:

• Announcement (link to NASB site).
• Our Nigeria country page

 

The topics to be covered include:

• The updated timeline for the issuance of new accounting standards
• The recent tentative decisions on the major convergence projects
• The new standard on Fair Value Measurements and revised standards on Post-employment Benefits and Presentation of Items of Other Comprehensive Income, with key insights for an effective transition.

Full details of the webcast are provided below:

Topic:	IFRS: Important Developments
Date and time:	Wednesday, 27 July 2011 9:00-10:00am London time (GMT +1), which is 4:00-5:00pm Hong Kong Time (GMT +8)
Host:	Joel Osnoss, Global Managing Director – IFRS Clients and Markets
Presenters:	Randall Sogoloff, Leader – Global IFRS Communications Kush Patel, Director
More information:	Click Here
Registration:	Click Here

Access to recordings and other materials from past webcasts is available on our IFRS Webcasts page.

The comment letter highlights Deloitte's views on the issues relating to governance of the Trustees' review and the Monitoring Board's concurrent and independent review of the IFRS Foundation's governance. The following is an excerpt from the letter:

 

It is important that the governance structure fosters high quality by achieving a proper balance between accountability, effective oversight and legitimacy of the IASB on one hand and its technical independence on the other. In our letter of 25 March 2011 to the IFRS Foundation Monitoring Board, we expressed support for the three tiers of governance, under which: the Monitoring Board provides political legitimacy and accountability by acting as the link, via competent market authorities and/ or regulators, to national governments in jurisdictions using or committed to using IFRSs and provides oversight of and pro-active advice to the IFRS Foundation; the IFRS Foundation Trustees oversee the day-to-day activities of the IASB and related standard-setting activities and promote the transparency of the organisation; and the IASB acts as an independent standard-setter, operating within a clearly defined and documented system of due process.

In addition, we encourage the Trustees' to leverage experts in financial reporting from around the world throughout the standard-setting process. We, also, think the Trustees' should consider which issues might be dealt with by the enhanced governance structure proposed in the Report.

Click to Download our Comment Letter on Status of Trustees' Strategy Review (PDF 119k). All of our past comment letters are here.

The decision was made during the July IASB meeting.

We have posted Deloitte observer notes from some of the sessions held on Thursday and Friday (click through for direct access to the notes):

Thursday, 21 July 2011 (earlier sessions)

• Leases(IASB-FASB)
  • Statement of Cash Flows
  • Statement of Financial Position
  • Disclosures
• ICAS/NZICA Disclosure report (IASB-FASB)
• Effective Dates(IASB-FASB)
  • Leasing project
  • Effective dates and transition methods
  • Revenue recognition project

Friday, 22 July 2011

• IFRS Interpretations Committee update (IASB only)
• Financial Instruments – Effective date of IFRS 9 (IASB only)
• Asset and Liability Offsetting (IASB only)
• Financial Instruments — Hedge Accounting(IASB only)
  • Groups and Net Positions

Click here to go to the preliminary and unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers for the entire meeting.

The report, entitled Losing the excess baggage — reducing disclosures in financial statements to what's important, was prepared in response to a request from the IASB (see our earlier story) and outlines the recommendations of the Joint Oversight Group of the ICAS and NZICA on which existing IFRS disclosures can be amended, reduced or eliminated.

The project used the IASB's 2010 Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting as a guide, and considered disclosure requirements in all existing IASB standards, other than those not dealing with annual financial statements or which are subject to review under current IASB projects.

The report provides a detailed summary of changes to various standards, which if implemented, would have the effect of substantially reducing the volume of disclosures in financial statements. The ICAS and NZICA estimate implementation of the recommendations in the report could result in a 30% reduction in the volume of disclosure.

The reduction of the complexity of financial statements have arisen in many contexts in recent times. In April 2011, the Accounting Standards Board (ASB) of the United Kingdom Financial Reporting Council (FRC) published a report Cutting Clutter: Combating clutter in annual reports, which in common with the ICAS/NZICA report, noted that difficulties in reducing disclosure and applying the 'materiality' concept in the context of disclosure. The International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) is also seeking to simplify and streamline various aspects of reporting through its integrated reporting initiative.

The ICAS/NZICA report has been presented to the IASB and an education session on it is being held at this week's IASB meeting.

 

Meeting time is 13:30 to 18:15 (London time).

 

In a press release announcing the decision, the IASB and FASB noted that even through the boards have not completed all of their deliberations, the decisions taken to date were sufficiently different from those published in the exposure draft to warrant re-exposure of the revised proposals. Re-exposure is designed to provide interested parties with an opportunity to comment on revisions the boards have undertaken since the publication of the original proposals in August 2010.

In an updated work plan dated 30 June 2011, the IASB has previously indicated that the next step in the leases project would either be a review draft of the final IFRS, or re-exposure of the proposals. Given the boards had previously decided to re-expose the revenue recognition proposals, re-exposure of the leasing proposals is perhaps not unexpected.

The boards intend to complete their deliberations, including consideration of the comment period, during the third quarter of 2011 with a view to publishing a revised exposure draft shortly afterwards.

Click for IASB press release (link to IASB website). We maintain a history of the leases project Here.