The first presentation (20 slides) explores the impact of accounting volatility on financial stability, how IFRS 9, Financial Instruments and IFRS 17, Insurance Contracts contribute to stability, and the relationship between the IFRS Foundation and regulators.

The second presentation (26 slides) explains how accounting standards contribute to long-term investments and how capital markets benefit from transparent reporting.

Review the press release on the IASB's website.

“The new ASU reduces the cost of adopting the new leases standard for certain land easements,” noted FASB Chairman Russell G. Golden. “Additionally, it helps ensure that companies can make a successful transition to the standard without compromising the quality of information provided to investors about these transactions.”

Land easements (also commonly referred to as rights of way) represent the right to use, access, or cross another entity’s land for a specified purpose.  Land easements are used by utility and telecommunications companies, for example, when they need to take a small strip of land—or easement—to bury wires. Not all companies have historically accounted for them as leases.

The land easements ASU:

• Provides an optional transition practical expedient that, if elected, would not require an organization to reconsider their accounting for existing land easements that are not currently accounted for under the old leases standard
• Clarifies that new or modified land easements should be evaluated under the new leases standard, once an entity has adopted the new standard.  

The amendments in this Update affect the amendments in ASU No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842), which are not yet effective, but may be early adopted, and Example 10 of Subtopic 350-30. The effective date and transition requirements for the amendments are the same as the effective date and transition requirements in Update 2016-02. An entity that early adopted Topic 842 should apply the amendments in this Update upon issuance.

Review the press release and the ASU on the FASB's website.

The Diversity Assessment Report is designed to help regulated entities conduct self-assessments of their diversity policies and practices, as envisioned by the Joint Standards, and provides these entities with a template for submitting information about their self-assessments to OMWI. The Joint Standards also encourage regulated entities to publish information related to their self-assessments on their websites.

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

In December 2017, the IASB concluded its discussions of the scope of the project and the webinar will discuss the Board’s decisions and illustrative examples of transactions within the scope.

The IASB will offer a morning and an afternoon session to accommodate stakeholders in time zones around the world. Both 45-minute web presentations will also allow participants to ask questions. Registration is required (on the IASB's website) for the sessions:

• Session at 9:30 (GMT)
• Session at 15:00 (GMT)

A recording of the webinar will be available in due course.

Review the press release on the IASB's website.

The study, by Rahul Vashishtha and Mohan Venkatachalam of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Arthur G. Kraft of the Cass Business School of City University London, is set to appear in an upcoming issue of The Accounting Review, published by the American Accounting Association. The professors found that, when new regulatory mandates forced companies to increase the frequency of their financial reporting, they reduced their annual capital investments by around 1.5 to 1.9 percent of their total assets, depending on how the capital investments were defined. The average annual capital investments of those companies totaled approximately 9 percent of assets, so those reductions were hefty cuts.

Review the full article on Accounting Today's website.

This whitepaper explores compliance approaches, explains the importance of governance to successful compliance, and offers guidance on implementing new technologies to support GDPR initiatives.

In this report, you will learn:

1. How to solve for the challenge of identifying and accessing the right data
2. The right approach to track evolving data environments
3. Technology your peers will use to fulfill the GDPR’s many requirements

Download the report on Compliance Week's website.

The webcast is presented in two parts:

• Part 1 explaining why and how insurance contracts are grouped.
• Part 2 discusses recognition, derecognition and disclosures.

Review the press release on the IASB’s website. In addition, earlier webcasts and webinars on IFRS 17 are available through an archive.

And while there should be more momentum in the year ahead, the country could continue to see trade conflicts with the U.S., as well as potential social unrest, experts say.

Review the full article on Warton's website.

Two potential changes to the Whistleblower Program have been flagged by the Ontario government and the Commission, respectively.

• The Ontario government said it intends to introduce a civil cause of action for whistleblowers who experience reprisal for cooperating with the Commission.
• The Commission has proposed revisions to the Whistleblower Program to clarify that in-house counsel who report misconduct in breach of applicable law society rules will not be eligible for a whistleblower award.

Review the OSC Notice on the OSC's website and a summary on Torys LLP's website.

The proposed ASU requires financial statement preparers to reclassify stranded tax effects within accumulated other comprehensive income to retained earnings in each period in which the effect of the change in the U.S. federal corporate income tax rate in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (or portion thereof) is recorded. The amount of the reclassification would be the difference between the historical corporate income tax rate and the newly enacted 21 percent corporate income tax rate.

In the period of the reclassification, organizations would make the following transition disclosures:

• The nature and reason for the change in accounting principle
• A description of the prior-period information that has been retrospectively adjusted, and
• The effect of the change on affected financial statement line items.

The proposed amendments would be effective for all organizations for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018, and interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption would be permitted.

Review the press release and proposed ASU on the FASB's website.