No paper was provided for this session.

The ISSB Chair gave an overview of the first meetings of the ISSB, including this week’s meeting and decisions made to date. The ISSB Chair reiterated the importance of building a global baseline for sustainability reporting and therefore, the ISSB is working closely with the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) who is currently developing European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). He also listed the various consultative groups that have been established over the last few months to inform the standard-setting process of the ISSB.

Very recently, the ISSB decided to base the materiality definition for IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards on IAS 1. The ISSB also decided to remove the definition of enterprise value from IFRS S1 to avoid incompatibility with local regulations that have a different definition of enterprise value.

The ISSB’s agenda consultation will take place in the first half of 2023 to decide which topics the ISSB will focus on in addition to the core items it is already addressing.

One IASB member noted that there is an imbalance between entities that can provide the information readily and those that will struggle. He asked how the ISSB intends to address this issue. The ISSB Chair replied that the ISSB is exploring tools like a grace period for first-time reporters or allowing estimates when actual figures are impracticable to obtain. The ISSB will decide in the future how this affects the compliance statement.

Another IASB member asked which priority the cross-cutting projects (i.e. management commentary, intangible assets, climate-related risks in financial statements) will take on the ISSB’s agenda. The ISSB Chair replied that these projects are foundational and the ISSB will treat them as a priority regardless of the outcome of the agenda consultation.

When asked whether the ISSB was planning to issue a Practice Statement on materiality, the ISSB Chair confirmed that they are looking into it.