CESR advice on national GAAP equivalence to IFRSs

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11 Jul 2005

The Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) has published its final technical advice to the European Commission on the equivalence between Canadian, Japanese, and US general accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and IFRSs.

CESR's principal conclusion is that "the three countries' GAAPs, each taken as a whole, are equivalent to IFRSs". Therefore, CESR recommends that non-European companies trading in European securities markets be allowed to submit financial statements in Canadian, Japanese, and US GAAP without a full reconciliation of their accounts to IFRSs. However, they must provide information about certain specific differences between those national GAAPs and IFRSs. CESR's advice includes a non-exhaustive standard-by-standard list of differences as of 1 January 2005 for which disclosure of the nature and effect of the differences is required. CESR intends to update the list as of 1 January 2007. In addition, CESR proposes the following:
  • Companies that have subsidiaries such as Qualifying Special Purpose Entities (QSPEs) that are not consolidated for third country GAAP purposes, but are required to be consolidated for the purposes of IFRS, must report a pro-forma balance sheet and profit and loss account on their local GAAP basis, but including the unconsolidated subsidiaries.
  • Companies reporting under Japanese GAAP that have either accounted for mergers by the pooling of interest method and/or have consolidated subsidiaries on the basis of GAAPs that are not consistent with either IFRS or any of the third country GAAPs should report a pro-forma balance sheet and profit and loss account on the basis of IFRS covering business combinations and consistent accounting policies, respectively.
  • Japanese and US issuers must adopt accounting policies for the expensing of stock options on a basis equivalent (but not necessarily identical) to IFRSs, for implementation on or before 1 January 2007. (The US has already adopted such a standard, and Japan is considering doing so.)
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