Roundtables summary

The staff presented a paper summarising comments shared by participants at the conceptual framework project - measurement roundtables held in January and February, 2007, with members of the Boards and staff of the IASB and FASB.

One Board member pointed out that the paper also includes 'absolutely absurd statements' and recommended not to publish the document. Senior staff responded that a disclaimer would be included particularly stipulating that the statements were not those of Board members and that they do not reflect the views of the Board.

The Board decided to publish the document in order to fulfil the promise made to participants. However, an appendix might be included to segregate those statements that are considered to be demonstrably wrong.

Plan for using measurement roundtables comments

The Board made the following amendments to the overall project plan for this Phase:

• Not to hold roundtable discussions at the beginning of milestones II (Evaluation of measurement bases using qualitative characteristics) and III (Conclusions and applications) mainly because the roundtables held in January and February 2007 touched every aspect of the measurement phase.
• To issue comprehensive milestone summaries at the end of milestones I and II instead of the originally planned milestone draft (milestone I) and the preliminary views document (milestone II). The milestone summaries will not ask for comments formally but constituents will be encouraged to express their views.
• A preliminary views document will be issued at the end of milestone III. An Exposure Draft would be issued after the Board had analysed the comments on the preliminary views document.

The Board agreed to a number of staff proposals regarding the next steps in the project. These include the preparation of various papers addressing issues raised in the roundtable discussions such as:

• Providing a simpler and clearer grouping of the measurement basis candidates
• Analysing 'high-level issues' such as capital maintenance and monetary unit before evaluating the measurement basis candidates
• Discussing decision usefulness in general and evaluating the measurement basis candidates by using the relevance criterion before considering the other qualitative characteristics