The proposal revises the property disclosure requirements for mining registrants and related guidance “by aligning them with current industry and global regulatory practices and standards.” The purpose of the revisions is to help investors understand registrants’ mining properties so that they can “make more informed investment decisions.”

Foreign private issuers that use Form 20-F to file their Exchange Act registration statements and annual reports, or that refer to Form 20-F when filing their Securities Act registration statements on Forms F-1 and F-4, are generally not subject to Regulation S-K.

Because the SEC believes that the same property disclosure requirements should apply to both domestic and foreign mining registrants, the proposed rules would amend Form 20-F.

The proposed conforming changes are intended to ensure consistency in the mining disclosures of SEC filers across both domestic registrants and foreign private issuers (other than Canadian issuers that use the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System filing on Forms 40-F, F-10, F-7, F-8 or F-80). The proposed changes would particularly affect Canadian registrants that report pursuant to Form 20-F and are currently permitted to provide additional mining disclosure under NI 43-101 pursuant to the “foreign or state law” exception under Guide 7 and the “foreign law” exception under Form 20-F. The proposed rules would eliminate this exception and may thus increase compliance costs for these registrants to the extent that, as discussed previously, the proposed disclosure requirements differ from NI 43-101.482 That said, to the extent that these differences in disclosure requirements also provide expected incremental benefits, these benefits would mitigate any increase in compliance costs.

Comments on the proposed rule are due 60 days after the date of its publication in the Federal Register.

Review the press release and proposed rule on the SEC’s Web site.

The debate over which accounting standards philosophy is better—principles or rules—has persisted for decades with no end in sight. It’s a healthy debate. Principles written at too high a level result in issues with comparability and other challenges but excessive rules result in unnecessary complexity and invite structuring.

Having spent 40 years in this space as a US auditor and preparer and for several years as an IASB member, I have the benefit of seeing this issue from several perspectives, and I have no doubt that a principle-based approach to establishing accounting standards is, without question, the better way to go.

However a principle-based approach is only successful when several pre-conditions are present—some technical, some mindset—which is the focus of this article.

Read the editorial on the IASB's Web site.

On Relevance, the Trustees intend to accelerate the work to address barriers to high-quality digital reporting by collaborating with investors, securities regulators and others to ensure the IFRS Taxonomy remains fit for purpose. They will also establish a network of experts to provide advice on technological innovation and its impact and relevance to IFRS Standards. The Trustees have also decided to retain the existing focus of the Board on for-profit entities, with no expansion at this time to cover either the public sector or the private not-for-profit sector.

Regarding Consistent application, there will be an increased emphasis on activities to support the consistent application, additional resources and materials will be developed to assist the consistent implementation, and the Trustees will continue to develop relationships with securities regulators to support implementation of IFRSs around the world.

Governance and financing will see no change to the current three-tier structure, but steps will be taken to enhance the visibility of Trustee oversight of the Board. The geographical distribution of both the Trustees and the Board will be changed by combining the North American and South American allocations into a single ‘Americas’ category, and the size of the Board will be reduced to 13 members, with the flexibility to appoint a 14th member if appropriate. The Trustees will maintain the current funding model until the funding regime based on publicly supported financing is fully achieved.

The following additional information is available on the IASB's website:

• Press release
• ED of proposed changes to the Constitution
• Feedback statement
• Video of Michel Prada explaining the results of the review