Pre-meeting summaries for the October 2019 IASB meeting

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17 Oct, 2019

The IASB will meet in London on 22–23 October 2019 to discuss 10 topics. We have posted our pre-meeting summaries for the meeting that allow you to follow the IASB’s decision making more closely. For each topic to be discussed, we summarise the agenda papers made available by the IASB staff and point out the main issues to be discussed by the IASB and the staff recommendations.

Implementation matters:

  • Onerous Contracts: The staff recommend that for the planned amendments to IAS 37 the Board replace the examples proposed in the ED with a clarification that the costs that relate directly to the contract consist of both the incremental costs of fulfilling that contract and an allocation of costs that relate directly to fulfilling that and other contracts.
  • PPE—Proceeds before intended use: The staff recommend that the forthcoming amendments to IAS 16 have an effective date of 1 January 2022 and require retrospective application, but only for PPE made available for use on or after the beginning of the earliest period presented in the financial statements in which an entity applies the amendments. The amendments will prohibit the deduction of the proceeds from testing PPE, before it is capable of operating in the manner intended by management, from its cost.
  • Sale of a single asset entity containing real estate: The Board will discuss a matter referred to it by the IFRS Interpretations Committee, involving whether the sale of an entity that has only one asset (real estate) should be in the scope of IFRS 10 or IFRS 15. The staff recommend that the Board consider single-asset entities broadly, as part of the PIR of IFRS 10, rather than addressing this specific and narrow issue.  

Business Combinations under Common Control: The staff recommend that, when applying a predecessor approach for a business combination under common control, the acquirer should recognise and measure assets and liabilities at the carrying amounts included in the financial statements of the transferred entity (rather than at the amounts included in the consolidated financial statements of the common controller). The acquisition would be accounted for prospectively—i.e. the comparative information of the acquirer would not be adjusted.

Management Commentary: The staff recommend that the revised Practice Statement state that the enhancing qualitative characteristics of comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability are relevant to management commentary along with guidance on how to apply those characteristics. The Board will also begin its discussions of the business model. 

Accounting Policies and Estimates (amendments to IAS 8): The staff recommend that the Board finalise the proposed amendments to the definition of accounting estimates but not amend the definition of accounting policies.

SME Standard review and update: The staff recommend that the RFI ask whether the IFRS for SMEs Standard should be updated to align the definitions of Section 15 with IFRS 11 and introduce requirements on how an operator accounts for a joint operation and whether to retain the accounting policy election in Section 15 (i.e. cost model, equity method or fair value model). The staff will also ask the Board whether it wants to seek views in the RFI on aligning the definition of ‘control’ but not the definition of ‘joint control’ or if it wants to wait until the completion of the PIR of IFRS 10, 11 and 12 before considering aligning Section 15.

Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity: The Board has decided to develop amendments to IAS 32 to address practice issues, clarify the underlying principles in IAS 32 and develop additional application guidance. The Board will discuss the overall objectives of the project and the project timetable, which could lead to an Exposure Draft in 2021.

Dynamic Risk Management: The staff have set out their outreach plan, which will focus on assessing the viability and operability of the DRM model and whether it will reflect an entity’s risk management strategy. The outreach will focus exclusively on financial institution and aim to provide feedback to the Board by June 2020.

Subsidiaries that are SMEs: The staff ask the Board to indicate how it wants to tailor the disclosure requirements of the IFRS for SMEs Standard. 

IBOR Reform and the Effects on Financial Reporting: The staff recommend that the Board amend IFRS 9 to clarify that an entity should apply the IBOR practical expedient first, by updating the effective interest rate based on the alternative benchmark rate, and then apply IFRS 9 current requirements (with an example in IFRS 9 to illustrate this). In the context of the IBOR reform, the staff conclude that the current requirements in IFRS 9 provide an adequate basis to determine if any other modifications to that financial instrument are substantial, and propose no other amendments to IFRS 9.

Amendments to IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts: The Board will be given an update on feedback from outreach. 

More information

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

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