In terms of headline findings, Brand Finance's Global Intangible Finance Tracker (GIFT) report found that:

• Global intangible value reached $57.3 trillion at the beginning of the current financial year, busting through the $50 trillion barrier for the first time
• Intangible value now constitutes 52% of the overall enterprise value of all publicly traded companies worldwide (which now amounts to $109.3 trillion)
• 76% of the world’s intangible value – $43.7 trillion – remains unaccounted for on balance sheets (up 25% year on year).
• Belgium boasted the highest percentage of disclosed intangibles versus total enterprise value (39.8%), in large part due to Anheuser-Busch InBev’s balance sheet – the company having the second-highest value of disclosed intangibles worldwide, totalling $187 billion.

Review the article on World Trademark Review magazine's website.

As noted in an article from the Journal of Accountancy, there were two kinds of business email compromises — emails from fake executives and ones from fake vendors.

In schemes involving emails from fake executives – also called “executive impersonation” – fraudsters not affiliated with a company use spoofed email addresses to send communications that appeared to come from a company executive, typically the CEO. Sometimes, the spoofed emails used real law firm and attorney names. The executive impersonation emails often had these common elements:

1. Referred to time-sensitive “deals” that needed to be completed within days, emphasizing the need for secrecy from other company employees and sometimes suggested some form of government oversight.
2. Claimed that the requested funds were needed for foreign transactions – and all directed the wire transfers to foreign banks. The emails provided minimal details about the transaction – and while all of the companies had some foreign operations, these types of foreign transactions would have been out of the ordinary.
3. Typically went to mid-level personnel who rarely communicated with the executives being spoofed – and who typically were not involved in the supposed transactions.

Review the press release and report on the SEC's website.

Here are the key findings:

• The overall number of comment letters issued by the SEC has decreased since 2010
• The percentage of comment letters referencing a non-GAAP metric increased through 2017, but has been trending downward in the first 6 months of 2018
• The number and percentage of non-GAAP comment letters declined in 2018, while remaining above the 2015 level
• The ratio of non-GAAP letters that focus on tailored accounting increased from 6.5% in the last 6 months of 2016 to 12.3% in the first 6 months of 2018, while the total number of comment letters in the same periods decreased from 2,876 to 1,475

Review the full article on Audit Analytics' website.

The purpose of the TRG is to seek feedback on potential issues related to im­ple­men­ta­tion of IFRS 17, Insurance Contracts. Specifically, the TRG discussed the following:

• Insurance risk consequent to an incurred claim
• Determining discount rates using a top-down approach
• Commissions and reinstatement premiums in reinsurance contracts issued
• Premium experience adjustments related to current or past service
• Cash flows that are outside the contract boundary at initial recognition
• Recovery of insurance acquisition cash flows
• Premium waivers
• Group insurance policies
• Industry pools managed by an association
• Annual cohorts for contracts that share in the return of a specified pool of underlying items

A summary on the meeting and audio record­ings of each session are available on the TRG meeting page on the Boards’ website.

In addition, see the meeting summary and listen to the podcast on the Board's website.

View the short overview (17 minutes) on YouTube.

The topics discussed at this meeting include:

• Conversions under IFRS 17
• Risk adjustment for worker’s compensation boards
• Insurance risk consequent to an incurred claim
• Determining discount rates using a top-down approach
• Commissions and reinstatement premiums in reinsurance contracts issued
• Premium experience adjustments related to current or past service
• Cash flows that are outside the contract boundary at initial recognition
• Recovery of insurance acquisition costs
• Premium waivers
• Group insurance policies
• Industry pools managed by association
• Annual cohorts for contracts that share in the return of a specific pool of underlying assets
• Reporting on other questions submitted to the IASB Transition Resource Group for IFRS 17

Review the summary on the AcSB's website.

In his speech, Mr. Prada looked back over the long success story of IFRS Standards^® that he had been closely involved with over twenty years. As he explained, the birth of the IFRS movement began, as many other movements do, with a crisis. In the late nineties, the Asian financial crisis hit a deeply fragmented accounting world, and in May 2000 IOSCO endorsed international financial reporting standards — in a meeting chaired by Michel Prada at that time. And while the SEC realized that it needed to protect investors that were increasingly investing abroad, the Enron scandal shook belief in US GAAP, and the international community came to the conclusion that "international accounting standards could not be drafted in Connecticut".

Mr. Prada explained how the European Union decided to adopt IFRS Standards from 2005 and how the EU, Hong Kong, South Africa, and others led the way in global adoption. Today, Mr. Prada stated, nine out of ten jurisdictions apply IFRS Standards, and many large jurisdictions that have not joined fully (yet) have either standards that are close to IFRS Standards or permit IFRS Standards — sometimes for certain groups only (Mr. Prada detailed the situation in China, India, Japan, and the US). He also touched upon the topic of consistent application. While there was still much to do and while, as Mr. Prada commented on one of the first adopters of IFRS Standards, "in Europe not everything is always easy" these days, he concluded that IFRS Standards have come of age.

Looking to the future of IFRS Standards, Mr. Prada talked about the relevance of accounting in an age of digital disruption and how IFRS Standards need to adapt and evolve. He also discussed broader corporate reporting and the need to cooperate globally to provide investors with a tool to assess companies performance across many fields. In this world, he maintained, IFRS Standards need looking after and sometimes even protection, but he did not doubt their relevance.

Taking leave of the standard-setters community, he urged his audience to deepen their cooperation, to develop standards together and to solve problems together. He ended with two strong messages: "IFRS Standards are not merely about standards, but also about people," he said, and "IFRS remains a shining example of what can be achieved when people work together."

Mr. Prada's term as Chair of the Trustee's ended in December 2017 but he agreed to stay on until a successor could be found. He will hand over to the designated Chair of the Trustees, Mr. Erkki Liikanen, at the Trustees' meeting in Johannesburg later this month.

Review the press release on the IASB's website.

The TCFD surveyed disclosures of over 1,700 firms from diverse sectors with broad geographical representation.

Even though the TCFD found that the majority of the firms surveyed disclose information aligned with at least one of the TCFD recommended disclosures, many companies just describe climate-related risks and opportunities but don't disclose the financial impact of climate change on the company.

The report also notes that disclosures vary widely across industries and that more non-financial companies than financial companies reported their climate-related metrics and targets. In addition, disclosures are often made in sustainability reports or spread across financial filings, annual and sustainability reports.

Review the press release and the status report on the FSB's website.

Below is an analysis of all changes made to the work plan since our last analysis on July 20, 2018.

Standard-setting projects

• Primary financial statements — After deliberations at its September meeting, the IASB decided to move the project from the research agenda to the standard-setting agenda.

Main­te­nance projects

• Classification of liabilities as current or non-current (Amendments to IAS 1) — After deliberations at its September meeting, the IASB decided the next milestone would be an IFRS amendment. No expected date has been set.
• Definition of a business (Amendments to IFRS 3) — An IFRS amendment has been pushed to October 2018 (previously set to September 2018).
• Disclosure Initiative — Accounting policies — Newly added to the work plan. The Board discussed this topic at its September meeting. An exposure draft is noted in the work plan without an expected date.
• Updating a reference to the Conceptual Framework (Amendments to IFRS 3) — Newly added to the work plan; the Board will decide the project direction at its November 2018 meeting.

Research projects

• Extractive activities — Newly added to the work plan. The Board discussed this topic at its September meeting and plans to review research. No expected date is listed.
• IBOR reform and the effects of financial reporting — Newly added to work plan; the Board plans to decide the project direction in Q4 2018.
• Pension benefits that depend on asset returns — Newly added to the work plan; the Board plans to review research in H2 2019.
• Share-based payment — The project summary slipped from September 2018 and is now expected in October 2018.

Other projects

• IFRS Taxonomy update — 2018 general improvements — Newly added to the work plan; a proposed update is expected in Q4 2018.
• IFRS Taxonomy update — Common practice (IFRS 13) — The IASB published this update on 20 September 2018. The work plan now states that the Board will analyse feedback in Q1 2019.

The revised IASB work plan is available on the Board's website.

This Taxonomy update includes elements to reflect the new common reporting practice for the disclosure requirements in IFRS 13, Fair Value Measurement, including (1) sensitivity of fair value measurement to changes in unobservable inputs and (2) quantitative information about significant unobservable inputs used in fair value measurement.

Review the press release and Taxonomy update on the Board’s website.