The podcast features discussions of the following topics:

• Wider corporate reporting,
• Primary financial statements, and
• Financial instruments with characteristics of equity.

The podcast can be accessed through the press release on the IASB website. More information on the topics discussed is available through our comprehensive notes taken by Deloitte observers of the March 2017 meeting.

The EMMoU provides for additional enforcement powers that IOSCO believes are necessary for continuing to safeguard the integrity and stability of markets, protect investors, and deter misconduct and fraud.

Review the press release on the IOSCO's website.

Mr. Teotia joins the SEC from Deloitte & Touche LLP where he was a partner in the National Office Accounting Consultation Group. In addition, he served as an SEC accounting fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant from 2009 to 2011.

Review the press release on the SEC’s Web site.

It is the traditional Catch-22 of financial disclosure. Create a mass of requirements and all you will see is checklist and boilerplate information. Remove some of the requirements in an attempt to encourage judgement and what you get is complaints from investors that they are being denied information. Furthermore, if you want a degree of consistency, preparers need disclosure objectives to exercise their judgement.

There is also the question of whether you need to write out principles about good communication, or whether it should be down to common sense.

Although the debate has been with us for many years this is the IASB’s first attempt to step back, rethink and try to steer an effective way through these issues. The IASB has produced a discussion paper on Principles of Disclosure.

It all comes down to a deceptively simple question: deciding what to disclose and how to disclose it.

The discussion paper leaves everyone with a lot to think about. There are complexities and uncertainties. Will it be possible to create more structure? What role should management judgement be allowed to play? The next six months gives everyone an opportunity to put their views across.

Read the entire column on our Global IAS Plus site.

Mr. Morisset was first appointed CSA Chair in March 2015.

Review the press release on the CSA's website.

This issue features:

• An overview of proposed amendments to IFRS 8.
• The usefulness of the new disclosures required in IAS 7.
• Request for views on the Principles of Disclosure discussion paper, proposed amendments to IFRS 8, and primary financial statements.
• Information on investor materials and current events.

The Investor Update newslet­ter is available on the IASB’s website.

Suggested changes

The amendments proposed in ED/2017/2 Improvements to IFRS 8 'Operating Segments' (Proposed amendments to IFRS 8 and IAS 34) are:

• Description of the chief operating decision maker. The IASB proposes to clarify IFRS 8 by:
  • stressing that the chief operating decision maker is the function that makes operating decisions and decisions about allocating resources to operating segments and assesses their performance;
  • noting that the chief operating decision maker can be an individual or a group;
  • stating that a group identified as a chief operating decision maker can have non-executive members; and
  • requiring that an entity discloses the title and description of the role of the individual or the group identified as the chief operating decision maker.
• Identification of reportable segments. Proposed amendments to IFRS 8 regarding this issue include:
  • requiring that an explanation of the reasons is disclosed if segments identified in the financial statements differ from segments identified in other parts of the entity's reporting; and
  • adding further examples to the aggregation criteria for operating segments with similar economic characteristics.
• Additional segment information. The IASB believes that IFRS 8 should be clarified by:
  • noting that under certain circumstances an entity may disclose segment information that goes beyond the information regularly provided to and reviewed by the chief operating decision maker.
• Description of reconciling items. Regarding this issue IFRS 8 would be amended by:
  
  • clarifying that sufficiently detailed explanations are required for the reconciling items so that users can understand their nature.
• Change in the composition of an entity’s reportable segments. This proposed amendment regards IAS 34 where the IASB suggests:
  • requiring that the first interim report after a change in the composition of an entity’s reportable segments must contain restated segment information for all interim periods presented.

Effective date and transition requirements

The exposure draft does not contain a proposed effective date which the IASB intends to decide on after the exposure. Nevertheless, has already concluded that earlier application would be permitted, however, the amendments to IFRS 8 and the amendments to IAS 34 must be applied at the same time.

Additional information

Please click for:

• IASB press release (link to IASB website)
• Access to the exposure draft on the IASB website

The key elements of the AcSB’s Strategic Plan considered for this annual plan are summarized below:

Overarching strategic goal - Retain separate strategies for each category of reporting entity in Canada’s private sector

Publicly accountable enterprises - Support the application in Canada of IFRSs

• Influence future international standards by maintaining and leveraging Canada's strong reputation internationally.
• Stakeholders apply new and existing IFRSs effectively.
• Differences in global standards are narrowed, including alignment of adoption dates for new IFRSs.

Private enterprises - Retain and improve the standards in Part II

• Part II contains a high-quality set of standards that:
  • produces decision-useful information;
  • is complete; and
  • supports the exercise of professional judgment while providing sufficient guidance to result in consistent application.
• Private enterprises apply new and existing standards effectively.

NFPOs - Retain and improve the standards in Part III

• Improvements to the Part III standards consider stakeholder input and the unique needs of NFPOs.
• The needs of NFPOs are met following changes made to ASPE.

Pension plans - Retain the standards in Part IV

• Part IV standards meet the needs of this sector.

Review the Annual Plan on the AcSB's Web site.

Bob Laux is a financial reporting guru. A couple of years ago, at a panel event in Los Angeles he surprised everyone by saying he was "disgusted" at the state of the accounting profession. He was saying it for effect. But he needed to shout loudly to draw his audience’s attention to his view that financial reporting in the US had become a rolling mass of infrastructure, which didn’t really serve its users very well.

And when we talked recently, he talked about how "discouraged" he was by his profession, the accounting profession. "We are a great profession but we can do better", he said. "In the US we have periodic reporting, the 10Qs and 10Ks, and a tremendous amount of effort is put into those documents. There is a lot of infrastructure and controls on top of them. It is a huge infrastructure. It is rules. It is a lot of disclosure, documents which run to well over a hundred pages that I don’t think too many people are reading and may be not their first source for investing".

So how could he combat this massive obstacle? His answer is that "we are just going to have to be smart about it". And that, for Laux, means integrated reporting, reporting based on the different capitals which underpin value creation of a company. "We have been talking about this type of reporting for over two decades now. We have come a long way. But now is the time for action".

Read the entire column on our Global IAS Plus site.