An agenda and details on how to register for the meeting can be found on the EFRAG website.

Tuesday 13 December

The last meeting for 2016 starts with a brief oral update on IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers.

Two implementation issues are being discussed. The first is a proposal to amend IAS 19 Employee Benefits and IFRIC 14 IAS 19—The Limit on a Defined Benefit Asset, Minimum Funding Requirements and their Interaction. The second is to discuss whether or how to address issues that have arisen in the application of IFRS 9 Financial Instruments in relation to prepayment options and the assessment of the SPPI condition.

The Financial Instruments with the Characteristics of Equity Project has a discussion of derivatives on ‘own equity’, assessing how application of the model being proposed would be affected by seven variables.

The Rate Regulated Activities project returns to the Board for its first substantive discussion since July 2015. This is an education session, which means that the Board will not be asked to make any technical decisions. The session includes an analysis of the model being proposed.

Wednesday 14 December

The Wednesday sessions begin with a session on the Conceptual Framework. They will discuss papers on Measurement—redrafting the factors to consider in selecting a measurement basis; Business activities and long-term investment; Concepts of capital and capital maintenance; and Derecognition.

The Board will discuss its project on the Primary Financial Statements, focusing on the scope of the planned discussion paper. The staff are proposing a narrow scope project, with targeted improvements. The main focus will be on the Statement of Comprehensive Income, with some possible changes to the Statement of Cash Flows. The staff are also examining developing templates for a small number of industries.

The Disclosure Initiative has two topics—materiality and disclosures about restrictions on cash and cash equivalents.

The Board will conclude its discussions on the materiality practice statement and are recommending that the final document be prepared. Relatedly, the staff are now recommending that the Board issue a separate exposure draft to amend the definition of materiality in IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements. Previously the Board had decided to wait until they had received feedback on the Principles of Disclosure discussion paper.

For disclosures about restrictions on cash and cash equivalents, the staff are now recommending that the Board not proceed with the proposed amendments to IAS 7 Statement of Cash Flows that were exposed in 2014.

The meeting concludes with an education session to inform the Board of the upcoming release of the IFRS Taxonomy Update for the 2015/2016 common practice project, which focused on agriculture, leisure, franchises, retail, and financial institutions.

More information

Our pre-meeting summaries are available on our December meeting note page and will be supplemented with our popular meeting notes after the meeting.

The issue arose from a submission to the IFRS Interpretations Committee related to whether a debt instrument with a symmetric make whole prepayment option or a fair value prepayment option could meet the ‘solely payments of principal and interest on the principal amount’ (SPPI) criterion for measurement at amortised cost under IFRS 9. The IFRS IC discussed the issue at its November 2016 meeting where the majority of members concluded that the prepayment options described in the submission do not meet the requirements in IFRS 9.B4.1.11(b) which states:

As a consequence the IFRS IC concluded that the IASB should consider changing the requirements in IFRS 9 in this respect (taking into account the broader range of prepayment options that exist in practice and not only the options described in the submission) as well as the measurement basis that would provide the most relevant and useful information about particular financial assets that would otherwise meet the SPPI condition, but fail it because of the existence of a symmetric ‘make whole’ prepayment option. Nevertheless, the IFRS IC Chairman cautioned against the extent of the expectation that the Committee should have on how far the Board would take the issue given past decisions on similar issues.

The staff has now prepared a paper for the upcoming IASB meeting detailing the background to the issue, the staff analysis and conclusion, the feedback from the Interpretations Committee, and the original submission received. The staff recommendation is that the Board considers adding a limited-scope project on this issue to its agenda. The Board will discuss this recommendation on 13 December 2016.

Please click to access the staff paper on the IASB website.

The purpose of the survey was to “obtain views on Integrated Reporting <IR> and on the work of the IIRC, to enable <IR> to continue to develop as a global movement and inform future strategy and plans”.  A total of 535 responses were received.

Key findings include:

Global views on Integrated Reporting

• 62% of respondents believe that the IIRC is making ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ progress towards the global adoption of <IR>.
• 78% of respondents agree that the <IR> Framework is a ‘very high quality’ or ‘high quality’ reporting framework for reporting value creation over time.
• 87% of respondents ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ that <IR>promotes a more joined-up and efficient approach to corporate reporting.
• The top three areas which respondents indicated would improve the adoption of <IR> in their market were; stronger endorsement from regulators/policy makers, provision of more examples of integrated reports and further endorsement from leading companies. 

Global views on the corporate reporting system

• 59% of respondents consider that the current elements of corporate reporting are only ‘quite joined up’ or ‘not joined up’ at all. Only 28% believed that the current elements are ‘joined up’ or ‘highly joined up’.
• The biggest concerns for stakeholders were a perceived poor linkage of reporting to corporate strategies and governance and insufficient focus on the medium or longer term.
• 61% of respondents felt that the IIRC was being successful in achieving a change in the global corporate reporting landscape. 

Responses were also provided on Stakeholder’s views on the work of the IIRC including on its institutional arrangements and composition of the IIRC Board and Council. 

The full results of the Stakeholder Feedback survey, including findings at a regional level, are available on the IIRC website.

The meeting will include discussions on:

• Revenue from contracts with customer — Update.
• IFRS implementation issues.
• Financial instruments with characteristics of equity — Summary of discussions to date.
• Rate-regulated activities
• Conceptual framework — Measurement and concepts of capital and capital maintenance.
• Primary financial statements — Project scope.
• Disclosure initiative — Restrictions on cash and cash equivalents.
• IFRS Taxonomy — Education session.

The full agenda for the meeting can be found here. We will post any updates to the agenda, our comprehensive pre-meeting summaries as well as observer notes from the meeting on this page as they become available.

The IFRS Advisory Council provides a forum for the IASB to consult a wide range of interested parties affected by the IASB's work, with the objective of advising the Board on agenda decisions and priorities in the Board's work, informing the Board of the views of the organisations and individuals on the Council on major standard-setting projects, and giving other advice to the Board or to the Trustees. The Council used to meet three times a year, however, yesterday's changes to the constitution of the IFRS Foundation saw the numer of meetings of the Council reduced to two a year.

Ms Perry's second term begins on 1 January 2017. Please see the press release on the IASB website for more information.