Mr Hoogervorst opened his speech by commenting on the situation in Japan and the relationship between the ASBJ and the IASB. Japanese representatives serve in all levels of the IASB's governance structure and Japan is among the top financial contributors and intellectual contributors to the IASB's work. As before, Mr Hoogervorst took this as an opportunity to invite Japan to fully embrace IFRSs.

The IASB Chairman then turned to the current work programme and mentioned that an end is in sight on three major standards many constituents have been waiting for: revenue recognition, leases and financial instruments. He promised that the new revenue recognition standard would be issued "in the next few months" and that the final standard would be almost identical between IFRS and US GAAP. On the topic of leases, he admitted that the standard was controversial and many concerns were being voiced. He added however: "We take these concerns very seriously." and pointed out that the IASB had already made some decisions designed to reduce implementation costs. Lastly, Mr Hoogervorst noted that the IASB has finalised its deliberations on financial instruments classification and measurement and impairment.

The main topic of Mr Hoogervorst's speech was the IASB's work on the conceptual framework. Feedback on the IASB's discussion paper published in July 2013 had made very clear that there is still work to be done on measurement. Although constituents had voiced support for the IASB's choice for mixed measurement, they were looking for more in-depth analysis on the different measurement bases and the information they provide.

Turning to the title of his speech, Mr Hoogervorst admitted that another hotly-debated topic in the comment letters was the question of Profit or Loss versus Other Comprehensive Income (OCI). Many constituents asked the IASB to define Profit or Loss as an element and to draw a clear distinction with OCI. Yet while many constituents asked for such a definition very few had suggestions as to how that might be achieved. At this point, Mr Hoogervorst pointed to a discussion paper (link to IASB website) the ASBJ presented at the meeting of the Accounting Standards Advisory Forum (ASAF) in December 2013. Unfortunately, he said, there had been very little consensus among ASAF participants on the details of the paper, yet he described it as "a courageous effort" and "an important contribution to the beginning of the path forward".

The IASB, Mr. Hoogervorst noted, considers Profit or Loss the ‘primary source of information about the return an entity has made on its economic resources in a period’ and should be as inclusive as possible. He added: "It is absolutely vital that Profit or Loss contains all information that can be relevant to investors and that nothing of importance gets left out." Yet he also admitted that a broad definition of Profit or Loss comes at the price of being somewhat rough. As a way out, he suggested accepting that preparers and analysts "may need non-GAAP measures to fine-tune their presentation or assessment of an entity", which he mentioned was acceptable as long as these additional measures build on IFRSs and can be reconciled with the IFRS numbers.

On OCI, Mr Hoogervorst commented that it was obvious from the comment letters received that many constituents struggled with this subject. It was even suggested that the IASB should not even deal with OCI on a conceptual level as it was unlikely that a sound conceptual basis could be found. Stressing that his comments were personal and very preliminary, Mr. Hoogervorst voiced the opinion that Profit or Loss should be the primary indicator of performance in a time period, and that the IASB should be very disciplined in its use of OCI as resorting to OCI too easily would undermine the credibility of net income. Therefore OCI should only be used as an instrument of last resort. He even added the hope that "a future financial presentation project may produce better ways of presenting income of a more uncertain nature, without having to resort to the use of OCI".

Please click for the full text of Mr Hoogervorst's speech on the IASB website.