Provided all necessary Ministerial approvals are obtained, the amendments will come into force on March 8, 2017. There will be a phased implementation of the requirements. Effective September 1, 2017, ETFs will be required to produce and file an ETF Facts and make it available on the ETF’s or the ETF manager’s website. Dealer delivery obligations related to the ETF Facts will come into effect on December 10, 2018.

Review the press release and the summary disclosure document on the CSA's website.

The SASB's State of Disclosure Report is a reference document that provides an overview of the quality of existing corporate disclosure across 79 industries in hundreds of SEC filings across every major industry. The report shows 81 percent of all disclosures analyzed across all SASB disclosure topics indicate some level of disclosure in SEC filings. However, more than 53 percent use boilerplate language and less than 24 percent of these disclosures contain metrics – demonstrating that many companies take a minimally compliant approach to sustainability disclosure. Review the report on the SASB's website.

The purpose of the IIRC's stakeholder feedback survey was to obtain views on integrated reporting and on the work of the IIRC. While 87 percent of responses strongly agree or agree that integrated reporting promotes a more joined up and efficient approach to corporate reporting, views on the work of the IIRC are more mixed with 45 percent of the total global responses saying they do not know whether the institutional arrangements for the IIRC are appropriate to the overall aims of the IIRC relating to integrated reporting. Review the report on the IIRC's website.

In the article, Mr. Barcelo writes that housecleaning, though deeply embedded in the underground economy (UE), is but a small fraction of the UE whole. The major sectors are residential construction (28% of the total UE in 2012), finance, insurance, real estate, rental, leasing and holding companies (or FIRE, 13%), retail trade (13%) and accommodation and food services (12%).

How big is the UE? No one seems to agree on a number, and evaluations vary widely — if not wildly. The basic evaluation is from StatsCan, which places it at $45.6 billion in 2013, or about 2.4% of GDP (approximately $1.8 trillion). Other studies throw in higher numbers. Analyzing retrospectively the years 1998 and 2004, a 2010 Bank of Canada study rates the amount of underreported income at between 14% and 19% of GDP.

Review the article on the CPA Canada's website.

The main changes are:

• a reduction in the number of Board members from 16 to 14, which is the number of members the Board has been operating with for a while;
• amendments to the geographical distribution of Board members and Trustees; and
• amendments to Board members’ and Trustees’ professional background requirements.

Review the document outlining the feedback received to the consultation on the constitutional changes, together with the changes made, and a stand-alone updated version of the Constitution, which is effective December 1, 2016 on the IASB's website.

Mr. Siegel stated that the three major factors that influenced his view related to:

1. The timing of available information
2. The content of that information, and
3. Time constraint on analysts and investors to come to decisions.

In a perfect situation, all information would be available at the same time and there would be no time constraint in which to analyze it. However, as that was not the case, presentation became more important to him.

Therefore, as a FASB member, he took very seriously the question of whether presenting information on the face of the financial statement matters. In the future, if more footnote and 10-Q information becomes available earlier in the cycle of quarterly earnings results, it’s possible that the distinction might become less important. But until such a time, it will continue to be his view that presentation matters.

Review the article on the FASB’s website.

The proposed changes could make it easier and less costly for dissident candidates to be elected to corporate boards, which could have ripple effects on corporate governance practices and negotiating strategies for activists. Use of a universal proxy would require the dissident to provide advance notice of its nominees and incur the cost of preparing dissident proxy materials and sending those proxy materials to potentially more shareholders than it would otherwise solicit.

Review the update on Osler's website.

In the publication, they apply the Directive’s requirements in a "mock-up" management report of a fictional company in the food industry, which will especially help companies without prior experience in reporting on non-financial and diversity information.

Around 6,000 European companies are affected by this Directive which Member States have to transpose into their national laws by December 6, 2016.

Review the guide on the Accountancy Europe's website.

This paper offers an update on the AASB approach to country-by-country reporting and argues that while much of the tax transparency initiative to date has been driven by the tax authorities, in order to remain relevant in an ever-changing regulatory environment, it is time for accounting standard-setters to take a leadership role in improving income tax disclosures for users of financial reports.

Review the paper on the AASB's website.

Digital currency – A case for standard setting activity recommends that the IASB develop a standard that addresses the accounting for investments in intangible assets or other commodity type assets that are not financial instruments or inventory, since the current alternatives to account for digital currencies (IAS 2 or IAS 38) do not provide relevant information to users of financial statements. This issue also highlights a broader issue with IFRSs in that there is no accounting standard that deals with investments in intangible assets or other commodity type assets that are not financial instruments or inventory.

Review the paper on the AASB's website.

In our CFO’s corner series, Jerome Townsend, Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Audit - Public practice, who also helped establish Deloitte’s internal Audit Analytics team, discusses how in the spectrum of hindsight - insight - foresight, the information we rely on often resides squarely within the hindsight category, leaving the insight and foresight components to individual interpretation and ‘gut feeling.’ Many organizations have survived and even flourished in this respect, but as technology, data and talent continue to expand and evolve, the competitive advantage continues to shift to those who know how to turn information into intelligence. Organizations that do this well are known as Insight Driven Organizations (IDOs).

Visit the CFO’s corner in Deloitte’s Centre for Financial Reporting to read this editorial as well as any previous articles that you may have missed.