The Guidelines are an essential part of GRI's Reporting Framework which provides guidance on how organisations can disclose their sustainability performance.

G3.1 is an update and completion of the third generation of GRI's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and includes expanded guidance for reporting on human rights, local community impacts, and gender.

In conjunction with the new reporting guidelines, GRI has also released guidance to help companies determine what to measure and report on, called The Technical Protocol — Applying the Report Content Principles, designed to enable organisations to produce relevant reports more easily.

More companies are choosing to produce the GRI guidelines in producing a sustainability report. For instance, 17 out of 18 members of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), which includes many of the world's biggest resources companies, disclosed social and environmental data in line with GRI standards in 2010.

Click for:

• More information on the G3.1 guidelines (link to GRI website)
• ICMM press release (link to ICMM website)
• Our sustainability reporting page.

 

The comment letter expresses Deloitte's views about the issues that are fundamental to the review of the IFRS Foundation's governance. The following is an excerpt from the letter:

The governance structure of the IFRS Foundation must facilitate achieving the ultimate goal of a single set of high-quality global financial reporting standards. The governance structure should provide for the independence of the standard-setter while ensuring the accountability of the IFRS Foundation to capital market authorities and ultimately governments.

The primary focus of setting financial reporting standards is the needs of participants in the capital markets and it is appropriate for the Monitoring Board to comprise capital market authorities responsible for the enforcement or endorsement of financial reporting standards for capital markets. So that it is able to meet this objective in a better manner, we support expanding the Monitoring Board to represent a more diverse population of capital market authorities from jurisdictions using or committed to using IFRSs. We think that IOSCO, which represents capital market authorities worldwide and is recognised as the G20's capital markets representative agency, is the appropriate agency to advise on membership of the Monitoring Board.

Click to Download our Comment Letter (PDF 106k). All of our past comment letters are here.

The step, which requires ratification from the institutes' respective governing bodies, would combine the resources of the AICPA in North America with CIMA's presence in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

CIMA and AICPA would create a new not-for-profit joint venture to be called the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. The joint venture would promote a new professional accounting designation which would recognise professionals around the world in management accounting, enterprise and performance strategy. The joint venture would also promote the US Certified Public Accountant (CPA) qualification as a worldwide standard of professional excellence in public accounting.

Click for CIMA press release (link to CIMA website).

Monday, 21 March 2011 (other sessions)

• Leases
• Initial direct costs
• Inception vs. commencement
• Determination of the discount rate in a lease

Tuesday, 22 March 2011 (other sessions)

• Financial instruments – Impairment
• Measurement of uncertain cash flows
• Impairment accounting for purchased loans

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

• Revenue Recognition
• Collectibility (continuation of discussion from Monday 21 March)
• Uncertain consideration

The IASB and FASB are holding an additional joint meeting on Tuesday 29 March 2011 (this meeting was originally scheduled for 28-29 March 2011).

Our earlier story about the outcomes from this week's meeting is available Here. Click here to go to the preliminary and unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers for the entire meeting (including the IASB meeting from the previous week).

We've posted Deloitte observer notes from some of the sessions held on the first and second days of this week's meeting (click through for direct access to the notes):

Monday, 21 March 2011 (IASB-FASB)

• Revenue Recognition
• Collectibility
• Time value of money
• Cross-cutting Issues
• Disclosure issues in the revenue recognition, leases, and insurance contracts projects
• Insurance Contracts
• Unbundling: Overall considerations
• Bifurcation of embedded derivatives
• Objective for an explicit risk adjustment
• Discounting for ultra long duration cash flows

Tuesday, 22 March 2011 (IASB-FASB)

• Insurance Contracts
• Explicit risk adjustment (education session)
• Contract boundary
• Leases
• Contracts that contain a lease
• Sale and leaseback transactions

The notes from the session on Leases held on Monday 21 March and Financial instruments impairment held on Tuesday 22 March will be posted soon. Also note the agenda for the meeting has been changed from that originally scheduled and a number of topics have been moved between days or removed from the agenda.

Click here to go to the preliminary and unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers for the entire meeting (including the IASB meeting from the previous week).

The meeting focused on the remaining three Memorandum of Understanding projects on financial instruments, leases and revenue recognition, as well as the project on insurance contracts. The EFRAG's recommendations on these four projects were discussed.

The aim of the task force is for listed companies to produce fully-tagged financial statements using the IFRS Taxonomy. Detailed tagging up to 'Level 4' will be applied to participants' financial statements, whereby all primary financial statement line items and notes disclosures will be tagged using the IFRS Taxonomy 2011.

The establishment of the task force follows a pilot initiative launched in April 2010 to work with US-listed foreign companies to produce IFRS financial reports in XBRL that are compliant with United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements. The pilot initiative involved the use of 'Level 1' XBRL tagging, i.e. all items in the primary financial statements were tagged while notes were tagged using a single text block. The 'Level 4' tagging in this initiative therefore represents a more in-depth test of the XBRL Taxonomy.

Entities interested in participating in the task force should express their interest by 10 April 2011, with participants to be chosen and notified by 15 April 2011. Click for IFRS Foundation press release (link to IASB website).

Financial journalist Robert Bruce, who is also the regular resident commentator for IAS Plus, provides a retrospective on the adoption of IFRS in Europe, discussing the successes, challenges and effects of the 'brave decision' of Europe to move to IFRSs from 2005, the resultant impacts on global standard-setting, the governance and other lessons learned from the process and what it means for the future.

The UK Accounting Standards Board (ASB) has published a Financial Reporting Exposure Draft, FRED 45, which sets out proposals to be included in a Financial Reporting Standard for Public Benefit Entities (FRSPBE) to accompany the proposed Financial Reporting Standard for Medium-size Entities (FRSME).

The standard addresses concerns that IFRS do not address some transactions that are specific to the public benefit entity sector. It is proposed that the FRSPBE will be mandatory for entities which meet the definition of public benefit entity that apply the proposed FRSME.

Issues which have been addressed include:

• Concessionary loans;
• Property held for the provision of social benefits;
• Entity combinations;
• Impairment of assets;
• Funding commitments; and
• Incoming resources from non-exchange transactions (donations etc).

The consultation period will run until 31 July 2011. It is proposed that the new Standard will be effective at the same time as the FRSME which is currently proposed for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 July 2013.

The consultation period for the draft FRSME ends on 30 April 2011. The ASB will be considering the responses it receives to the draft in May 2011 and will post on its website its tentative decisions as this redeliberation work progresses.

Click for:

• FRED 45: Financial Reporting Standard for Public Benefit Entities (FRSPBE) (link to ASB website)
• Our UK country page

 

The IFAC Sustainability Framework provides guidance on embedding sustainability into an organisation and can be applied to entities of all sizes and complexities. IFAC considers the accountancy profession and professional accountants as an essential part of ensuring organisations better integrate and account for sustainability.

The second edition of the Framework extends the first edition's theme of integration from a business strategy and operational perspective to that of an integrated reporting perspective. The reporting perspective has been updated to provide guidance on how to improve stakeholder communications, based on sustainability reporting and providing an integrated view of environmental, social, and financial performance. (See also our earlier story on IFAC's report highlighting significant changes to financial reporting.)

An extract from the Framework in relation to financial reporting is outlined below:

How professional accountants and their organizations can facilitate improved reporting Developing a reporting strategy to enable high-quality reporting and disclosure that provides a complete picture of an organization's performance for a range of stakeholders Reflecting sustainability impacts in financial statements, particularly focusing on environmental impacts on assets, liabilities, income, and expenditure [includes a discussion on IFRSs relevant to environmental issues] Narrative reporting for enhanced transparency and closing the reporting gap that occurs when information that is important in running an organization is not captured in financial statements Understanding and reconciling approaches to applying materiality to sustainability reporting Establishing an approach to external assurance and review that adds credibility to an organization's reporting, and provides internal benefits such as helping to improve underlying reporting processes.

The G20 is expected to consider a call for integrated reporting later in the year. IFAC's Sustainability Framework 2.0 can be accessed through the IFAC website. Click for IFAC press release (link to IFAC website).