In his speech, Mr Hoogervorst discussed "to which audience financial reporting should primarily be directed" and whether accounting standards should only serve the goal of transparency, or should they have a "financial stability objective". During his discussion on the role of accounting standard setters in creating transparency and stability, he stated:

So accounting standards can make a very important contribution to stability by providing maximum transparency, and by avoiding artificial noise. However it is important to keep this in perspective. Stability should be a consequence of greater transparency, rather than a primary goal of accounting standard-setters. For this, accounting standard setters simply lack the tools. For example, they cannot set capital requirements for the banking industry. This instrument belongs to the prudential regulators who do have stability as their main mission. What accounting standard setters can also not do is to pretend that things are stable which are not. And, quite frankly, this is where their relationship with prudential regulators sometimes becomes testy. Accounting standard setters are sometimes suspicious that they are being asked to put a veneer of stability on instruments which are inherently volatile in value.

Click for text of speech (link to IASB website).

In line with other responses GRI states that companies' stakeholders, including directly affected communities and the public at large, need comprehensive and credible information on corporate social and environmental impacts to identify problems with and monitor progress of the companies they deal with. GRI observes that the current system does not create a level playing field among business, as in most EU countries reporting by companies on their non-financial impacts is voluntary. Yet GRI also warns that the European Commission need not "reinvent the wheel" since there already are "guidelines that enable all companies and other organizations to produce comparable reports on their sustainability performance". According to GRI what is needed is mandatory application, not new standards.

Click for:

• GRI press release (link to GRI website)
• Our sustainability reporting page

 

His term begins immediately and expires on 31 December 2013. Mr Sluimers is Chief Executive Officer of APG Group, a Dutch-based provider of asset management, administration and communication services for pension funds. Please click for IFRS Foundation press release (35k).

 

Participants debated the merits and challenges of adopting a new framework for an integrated corporate reporting system for the 21st century. Coming out of the global financial crisis, there is an ongoing debate on the relevance of corporate reporting and whether it should include such externalities as environmental, social and governance performance. Increasingly, companies are producing, mostly on a voluntary basis, corporate social responsibility or sustainability reports, but these can vary widely in relevance and quality, largely because there is no global standard.

A summary of the outcomes from the session is reproduced below (with the kind permission of the WEF):

Key points There is a certain degree of deficiency in today's corporate reporting models Any new accounting format should focus on internalising externalities, such as environmental and social impacts Good thought leadership is needed to further the debate on developing a concise, comprehensive and comparable integrated reporting framework. Source: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011

Click for:

• WEF session summary (link to WEF website)
• Deloitte at Davos: 2011 participation
• Our sustainability reporting page.

 

You can access the agenda on our February 2011 IASB meeting page. We will also post Deloitte observer notes on this page as they are available.

The working paper, The Impact of Mandatory IFRS Adoption on Foreign Mutual Fund Ownership: The Role of Comparability, examines the change in foreign mutual fund investment in firms that began using IFRS after its mandatory adoption in the European Union (EU) in 2005, which the authors term a potential "real effect" of accounting.

The findings in the paper suggest that the effects of improved comparability associated with mandatory IFRS adoption on cross-border investment depend both on the institutional environment that shapes firms' reporting incentives (strong implementation credibility through the regulatory environment and management incentives) and on the extent of increased number of industry peers using the same accounting standards (uniformity).

With the current global debates on the implementation of IFRS in a number of the world's major jurisdictions (e.g. the United States and India), the paper is a timely reminder of how the objectives of IFRS might be best achieved.

Click to download the paper (PDF 372k). We have posted the paper with the kind permission of the authors, Mark DeFond (University of Southern California), Xuesong Hu (University of Oregon), Mingyi Hung (University of Southern California) and Siqi Li (Santa Clara University).

This batch includes editorial corrections and changes to Bound Volume (Red Book) 2010, Bound Volume (Blue Book) 2011, Improvements to IFRSs (issued May 2010), The Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (issued September 2010), Disclosures—Transfers of Financial Assets (issued October 2010), IFRS 9 Financial Instruments (issued October 2010), Deferred Tax: Recovery of Underlying Assets (issued December 2010) and Severe Hyperinflation and Removal of Fixed Dates for First-time Adopters (issued December 2010).

Click for Editorial Corrections to IFRSs (link to IASB website)

 

You can access the agenda on our 1-2 March 2011 joint meeting page.  We will also post Deloitte observer notes on this page as they are available.

This follows the nomination by the ESMA's Board of Supervisors on 11 January 2011. It is anticipated that Maijoor will take office on 1 April 2011. The term for the Chairperson is five years and may be extended once.

Steven Maijoor is currently a Director at the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) where he is in charge of financial reporting, auditing issues, market integrity supervision and part of the business operations.

Click for:

• ESMA press release (PDF 422k, link to ESMA website)
• Further ESMA news on our IFRSs in Europe pages