Click for:

• Normas Internacionais de Relatório Financeiro - Modelo de demonstrações financeiras para 2010 (2010 Model financial statements in Portuguese, PDF 1,416k).
• Checklist de Apresentação e Divulgação IFRS 2010 (IFRS Presentation and Disclosure Checklist for 2010 in Portuguese, PDF 1,629k).
• IFRS Checkliste zu Ausweis- und Angabevorschriften 2010 (IFRS Presentation and Disclosure Checklist for 2010 in German, PDF 2,808k).

The EBA Board of Supervisors selected Andrea Enria as the EBA Chairperson, subject to confirmation by the European Parliament. Mr Enria is currently the head of the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Department at the Bank of Italy. The Board of Supervisors also appointed Thomas Huertas as the EBA Alternate Chairperson. Mr Huertas was Vice-Chairman of the EBA's predecessor CEBS and is currently Banking Sector Director at the UK FSA.

The EIOPA Board of Supervisors has selected Gabriel Bernardino to become the first Chairperson. Mr. Bernardino is currently the Director General of the Directorate for Development and Institutional Relations at the Instituto de Seguros de Portugal (ISP). His nomination is subject to confirmation by the European Parliament. Mr. Bernardino represented EIOPA's predecessor, CEIOPS, as Chairman until December 2010. Additionally, the Board of Supervisors elected Victor Rod, Director of the Commissariat aux Assurances, Luxembourg, to be EIOPA's Alternate Chairperson.

EBA and EIOPA have both also announced a new round of stress tests.

Click for:

• EBA omnibus press release (link to EBA website)
• EIOPA press releases:
  • EIOPA Elects Its First Management Board (PDF 115k, link to EIOPA website)
  • Gabriel Bernardino Selected to be EIOPA's First Chairperson (PDF 106k, link to EIOPA website)
  • EIOPA to Launch Second Europe-Wide Insurance Stress Test (PDF 109k, link to EIOPA website)
• Further news on the new European supervisory structure on our IFRSs in Europe pages

The IFRS Foundation has concluded the pilot initiative that it launched in April 2010 to work with US-listed foreign companies to produce IFRS financial reports in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) that are compliant with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements.

The SEC issued a ruling in December 2008 requiring all US-listed foreign private issuers to submit their IFRS financial reports, including their periodic reports in XBRL from 15 June 2011.

12 companies voluntarily used the IFRS Taxonomy to produce 20-F filings in XBRL format that could be accepted by the US SEC EDGAR filing system. 'Level 1' XBRL tagging was applied to the filings, i.e. all items in the primary financial statements were tagged while notes were tagged using a single text block.

The outcomes of the pilot initiative revealed some interesting outcomes:

• Between 6 and 60 hours was required to complete the first stage of the process, which was the mapping of the primary financial statement line items to IFRS Taxonomy items
• Many participants found that they needed to create additional taxonomy items (i.e. IFRS Taxonomy extensions) to reflect common-practice concepts for their 20-F filings. The need for these extensions arose largely from IFRS requirements and the flexibility that IFRS allows for presentation and aggregation. The Foundation acknowledges this will need to be addressed, with an analysis to be undertaken of concepts that are not in the IFRS Taxonomy but that are commonly reported by commercial and industrial companies

The results of the pilot and further analysis will be used to make amendments to the IFRS Taxonomy. Further field tests are expected with financial institutions and insurers, and on detailed note tagging.

Click for:

• IFRS Foundation press release (link to IFRS Foundation website)
• Our XBRL page

The IASB and the FASB originally published separate proposals on credit impairment of financial assets. Although both boards proposed moving to a more forward-looking approach to accounting for impairment they proposed different models. Following joint discussion of the responses each board received on its original proposals, and requests by the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders, the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and others to achieve convergence in this area, the boards expect to propose a common approach that incorporates elements of each of their original models.

The boards will propose an impairment model based on accounting for expected losses. This approach provides a more forward looking approach to accounting for credit losses.

Click for:

• IASB announcement (link to IASB website)
• Our Financial instruments – Impairment page providing a comprehensive summary of the project, including recent joint discussions

A review of financial statements in accordance with the proposed ISRE consists primarily of making inquiries of management and others within the entity involved in financial and accounting matters, applying analytical procedures, and evaluating the sufficiency and appropriateness of evidence obtained. The procedures performed in a review are substantially less than those performed in an audit, and the practitioner does not express an audit opinion.

Comments on the exposure draft are requested by 20 May 2011. Click for IAASB press release (link to IFAC website).

An extract follows:

Click for FEI CEO's 2011 Top Challenges for Financial Executives (link to FEI website).

• 11 January 2011 – Patricia McConnell: The objective of financial reporting and the qualitative characteristics of useful information – what investors should know

All Investor Perspectives are archived on the IASB's website.