Financial statement presentation — Update on outreach activities

Date recorded:

The staff provided the Board with a summary of constituent outreach activities the IASB and FASB has performed since the publication of the staff draft. The staff noted that the outreach is still taking place, in cooperation with preparer group (re-casting the financial statements), users and user groups as well as the EFRAG. The staff also highlighted some of the areas frequently raised as concerns, or areas that need more clarification or are subject of misunderstanding among constituents but did not discuss the issues in detail as the outreach is still taking place.

Some Board members expressed serious concerns about the project — its timing (both in terms of Board time and implementation time), perceived complexity and costs to implement as well as application for financial institutions.

Some Board members questioned if all the proposals in the staff draft need to be implemented as a single package and asked the staff to ask for feedback during the outreach relating to prioritisation of some of the proposals that might be easier to implement.

Other Board members expressed their general concerns over the project — they would prefer first to address the conceptual issues what is performance, what is the principle around recycling before mandating the major change of financial statements. These Board members also noted that any proposal of change in financial statements should be finalised only after major changes related to financial instruments, leasing and revenue are finalised as they might change financial statements. Some Board members also noted that finalisation of this project is less urgent than finalisation of other convergence priorities before June 2011.

In general, the Boards seemed to prefer a pause in the project that would allow performing and finalising additional outreach and addressing concerns of constituents as well as development in other projects. The Boards noted that after the required changes caused by convergence priorities, it would be difficult to impose another significant change on constituents that was not perceived to provide major benefits so soon after implementation of major changes related to other priority projects.

Finally, the Boards asked the staff to continue in performing outreach activities and directed it to prepare a project plan that would allow for discussion of the proposal after June 2011.

 

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