News

IFRIC (International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee) (blue) Image

Agenda for 1-2 November 2007 IFRIC meeting

21 Oct 2007

The International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC) will meet at the IASB's offices in London on Thursday and Friday 1-2 November 2007. The meeting is open to the public and will be webcast.

The tentative agenda is shown below.

ifricagenda.gif

1-2 November 2007, London Thursday 1 November 2007

  • Introduction
  • IAS 27 – Accounting for Distributions of Non-cash Assets to Owners
  • IAS 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement – Two potential IFRIC agenda projects
    • Scope of IAS 39 paragraph 11A
    • Application of paragraph AG 33(d)(iii) of IAS 39
  • IAS 18 Revenue – Customer contributions The IFRIC will also consider a draft Interpretation prepared by the staff based on its discussions to date.
  • Review of Tentative Agenda Decisions published in September IFRIC Update
    • IAS 19 Employee Benefits Treatment of employee contributions
    • IAS 19 Employee Benefits Changes to a plan caused by government
    • IAS 19 Employee Benefits Death in service benefits
    The tentative agenda decisions and the comment letters received are available on the IASB Website.

 

Friday 2 November 2007

  • Staff Recommendations for Tentative Agenda Decisions
    • IAS 19 Employee Benefits Pension – Promises based on performance hurdles How to measure a defined benefit obligation that is based, in part, on the employee or company meeting a performance hurdle
    • IAS 37 Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets – Deposits on returnable containers
    • IAS 23 Borrowing Costs – Foreign exchange differences associated with capitalisable borrowing costs a. To what extent should foreign exchange differences be regarded as an adjustment to interest costs? b. When an entity hedges its exposure to foreign exchange movements, to what extent should costs associated with the hedging instrument be considered to be part of the borrowing costs that may be capitalised?
    • IAS 19 Employee Benefits – Definition of plan assets How should insurance and investment policies issued to a pension plan by an entity that employs the staff included in the plan (or by a subsidiary that is consolidated in the same group as that entity) be considered in determining plan assets.
    • IAS 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement – Scope of IAS 39 paragraph 2(g) Paragraph 2(g) exempts from the scope of IAS 39 'contracts between the acquirer and a vendor in a business combination to buy or sell an acquiree at a future date'. The project would consider several questions in applying this paragraph.
  • Administrative Session

 

 

2007oct.gif Image

Notes from IASB October 2007 meeting days 3 and 4

20 Oct 2007

The International Accounting Standards Board helde its October 2007 meeting at the Board's offices, 30 Cannon Street, London, on Tuesday to Friday, 16-19 October 2007.

Click here for the Preliminary and Unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers at the Meeting.
The IASB and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board will hold a joint meeting at the FASB's offices in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA on Monday 22 October to Tuesday 23 October 2007.

 

SEC (old) Image

US SEC Commissioner comments on IFRSs

20 Oct 2007

At a conference earlier this week in Tokyo, US SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins addressed a number of issues relating to IFRSs including elimination of the required reconciliation to US GAAP for IFRS filers, consistent application of IFRSs, and possible use of IFRSs by US domestic companies.

Click to download Commissioner Atkins's Remarks (PDF 82k). Here are several excerpts:

Reconciliation. "Strong arguments can be made for the rapid elimination of the reconciliation requirement. Reconciliation is an additional cost for foreign private issuers registered in the United States. That cost is hard to justify. In the discussions at the SEC's IFRS roundtable earlier this year, we learned that the reconciliations are of limited use to those who look at financial statements."

Consistent application. "The SEC is working with our fellow international securities regulators and accounting standard setting bodies to achieve the consistent application and interpretation of IFRS. The SEC staff, which receives IFRS filings from all over the world, is in an excellent position to spot potential issues, but it does not intend to become the arbiter of IFRS. I hope that if the rule is adopted and properly implemented, investors will benefit from the elimination of the costly reconciliation requirement, and businesses will be able to refocus their resources on more productive measures."

Possible use of IFRSs by US companies. "As further evidence of the global nature of the capital markets, the SEC likely will consider whether to take the additional step of permitting U.S. companies to select between using U.S. GAAP and IFRS. You can easily see the utility of IFRS for multi-national American companies that access international capital markets and have foreign-based competitors. Last month, the SEC voted to issue a concept release on permitting U.S. issuers to file their financial statements using IFRS rather than U.S. GAAP. That would leave the choice between U.S. GAAP and IFRS to the markets. If investors prefer one set of accounting standards over another, they may well reward with premium pricing those issuers who use the preferred set."

 

News default Image

Our views on IFRIC D22

20 Oct 2007

Deloitte has submitted a letter of comments on IFRIC's Draft Interpretation D22 Hedges of a Net Investment in a Foreign Operation.

We welcome guidance in the area of hedges of a net investment in a foreign operation (referred to as 'net investment hedging') as IAS 21 (and indirectly IAS 39) require clarification. We also welcome this draft interpretation as it deals with a number of net investment hedging issues as a consolidated package. An excerpt:

We support the objective of the interpretation to remove the ambiguity in IAS 21 regarding whether the hedged risk is the difference between the functional currency of the foreign operation and the functional or presentation currency of the parent. We recognise the arguments both for and against that are included in the draft interpretation and on balance agree with the conclusion that the IFRIC has reached.

We agree with the clarification that any parent entity within a group that has an interest in a foreign operation may apply net investment hedging. We believe the draft interpretation should be clearer as to whether designated net assets are either the net assets of individual foreign operations or net assets of a sub-consolidated foreign operation (ie a foreign operation that itself has investments in foreign operations and therefore converts its investments in foreign operations into its functional currency in determining a sub-consolidation). We believe both approaches are acceptable but we do not believe the draft interpretation is clear.

Our major concern with the draft interpretation is the guidance on which entity within the group can hold the hedging instrument.

Click for:
IASC Foundation (blue) Image

Revised agenda for IASC Foundation trustees meeting

20 Oct 2007

Two items have been added to the agenda for the 31 October 2007 public portion of the meeting of the Trustees of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, which we had originally reported in our news story of 15 October 2007.

The two new items are:

  • IFRIC Constitutional Change (proposal to increase the size of IFRIC from 12 to 14 members)
  • Report of the SAC Chairman
The meeting will be held at the offices of Morgan Stanley, 1585 Broadway, New York, NY 10036. The revised public agenda is as follows:

iascfagenda.gif

New York City, Public Portion, Afternoon of 31 October 2007 (13:15-17:00pm)


  • Approval of July Minutes
  • Report of the Procedures Committee
    • Feedback from September meeting with IASB
    • IFRIC Constitutional change
    • Discussion of IASB consultation initiatives (feedback statements and cost benefit analyses)
    • New Committee name
  • Report of the IASB Chairman
    • Review of convergence activities (United States, Japan, China, and India)
    • 2008 goals
    • Discussion of Proposed Agenda Items
    • Discussion of any implications of sub-prime and liquidity crisis for IFRSs
  • Report of the SAC Chairman
    • Update on SAC Effectiveness Survey
    • Plans for Upcoming SAC Meeting
  • Update on long-term funding

Click for our IFRS Foundation page.

Kazakhstan Image

Update on IFRS reporting in Kazakhstan

20 Oct 2007

We have updated our Table of Jurisdictional Use of IFRSs to reflect the following information for Kazakhstan:

  • Companies other than banks. Starting 2006, IFRSs have been required for all joint stock companies (which includes all listed companies plus some others) and for other companies with significant public interest (including extractive industry companies and companies with Governmental ownership).
  • Banks. Most banks were required to use IFRSs beginning in 2003 and the others starting in 2004.

Click to view our Table of Jurisdictional Use of IFRSs.

Japan Image

Japan plans oversight of foreign audit firms

20 Oct 2007

The Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) has invited comments on proposed regulations (known as Proposed Cabinet Orders and Cabinet Office Ordinances) that would implement revised Certified Public Accountants Laws that were passed by the Diet (Japanese parliament) in June 2007. The laws take effect in April 2008.

The revised laws include measures (a) to enhance the quality control and governance of, and disclosures by, audit firms; (b) to reinforce the independence of auditors; and (c) to strengthen oversight on auditors.
The revisions also include measures to introduce FSA oversight of foreign audit firms. Because the regulations affect foreign firms, the FSA has prepared an  English Translation of the Proposed Notification Requirement for Foreign Audit Firms (PDF 265k) and asks firms to comment by 29 October 2007. The entire proposed regulation is now on public consultation and available in Japanese on the FSA's Website.

 

European Union (old) Image

Report on first year implementation of IFRSs in EU

19 Oct 2007

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has published a report for the European Commission on the first year of implementation across the EU of International Financial Reporting Standards and the Fair Value Directive.

The study includes a detailed review of the 2005 financial statements of 200 companies from 25 EU member states.

Principal Components of the ICAEW Study of IFRS Implementaiton in the EU

  • analysis of the legal implementation of the IAS Regulation and the Fair Value Directive based on questionnaires sent to interested parties in all member states and subsequent work to try to resolve conflicting responses;
  • review of surveys and other literature on EU implementation of IFRS;
  • roundtables, principally involving preparers and auditors of IFRS financial statements, held in Dusseldorf, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome and Warsaw and used to test and explore the preliminary findings from our other work;
  • an on-line survey which generated usable responses from statistically valid samples of 51 investors, 162 preparers and 141 auditors across 23 member states covering understanding and use of IFRS financial statements, their preparation and audit, and the incremental costs to companies of applying IFRS;
  • a review of regulators' statements on EU implementation of IFRS and selected published correspondence between the SEC and EU companies;
  • an academic research paper on the relevance of IFRS information in explaining market prices and stock returns of French, Italian, Spanish and UK publicly traded companies;
  • the application of the EU Common Methodology to assess the costs of the IAS Regulation;
  • detailed technical analysis of the IFRS consolidated financial statements of a sample of 200 EU publicly traded companies;
  • high level technical analysis of IFRS consolidated financial statements of 18 EU non-publicly traded companies; and
  • high level technical analysis of IFRS legal entity financial statements of 50 companies.

Sections of the ICAEW Report on Implementation of IFRSs in the EU

  1. Objectives, terms and approach
  2. Implementation of the Fair Value Directive
  3. Implementation of the IAS Regulation
  4. Views of preparers, users and auditors
  5. The role of regulators
  6. The reaction of securities markets
  7. Costs of implementing IFRS
  8. IFRS consolidated financial statements of EU publicly traded companies
  9. IFRS consolidated financial statements of EU non-publicly traded companies
  10. IFRS legal entity financial statements
  11. First-time adoption of IFRS
  12. Fair presentation and accounting policies
  13. Financial statements presentation
  14. Fair value accounting
  15. The use of other options in IFRS
  16. Consolidated financial statements
  17. Banks
  18. Insurance companies
  19. Extractive industries
  20. Service concessions
  21. Intangible assets
  22. Defined benefit pension plan disclosures
  23. Share-based payments
  24. Financial instruments
Click to download:

 

PCAOB (US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) (dark gray) Image

Priorities of the PCAOB for 2008

19 Oct 2007

At yesterday's meeting of the Standing Advisory Group of the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, PCAOB Chief Auditor Thomas Ray outlined the PCAOB's Standard-setting Priorities for 2008.

Those priorities include:
  • Effective implementation of the internal control provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
  • Finalise proposed rules on auditor independence and prohibited services
  • Finalise proposed rules on evaluating consistency of financial statements
  • Auditing standard on engagement quality review
  • Auditing standard on risk assessment, including fraud risk assessment
  • Issues relating to auditing fair value estimates
  • Potential standards projects on auditor use of specialists, related parties, and confirmations
  • Action plan for review of 'Interim Standards' (old AICPA standards that were initially adopted by the PCAOB)

Click for PCAOB's Standard-setting Priorities for 2008.

 

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.