In November 2009, Deloitte's IFRS Global Office published a revised Guide to IFRS 1 First-time Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards.

The guide was first published in 2004 with the aim of providing first-time adopters with helpful insights for the application of IFRS 1. This second edition has the same objective. We have updated the content to reflect the lessons learned from the first major wave of IFRS adoption in 2005, as well as for the changes to IFRS 1 since 2004.

We have structured the guide to provide users with an accessible reference manual:

• An executive summary explains the most important features of IFRS 1
• Section 2 provides an overview of the requirements of the Standard
• Sections 3 and 4 cover the specific exceptions and exemptions from IFRS 1's general principle of retrospective application of IFRSs, focusing on key implementation issues
• Section 5 addresses other components of financial statements where implementation issues frequently arise in practice
• Section 6 sets out Q&As dealing with specific fact patterns that users may encounter in practice
• Section 7 discusses some of the practical implementation decisions faced by first-time adopters.