October

Three IFRS Webinars from SAP and Deloitte

31 Oct 2009

Deloitte (United States) and SAP have teamed up to offer a series of three Webinars designed to:

  • Help companies assess their IFRS readiness
  • Discuss the potential impact of IFRS conversion on financial consolidation and reporting
  • Explore typical challenges faced by organisations when adopting IFRS and ways to address them
The details:

IFRS Consolidations and Financial Reporting

  • Date and time: 4 November 2009, 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET
  • Presenters: Philip Mugglestone, Director of Solution Marketing, EPM, SAP; Ian Wright, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP; Deirdre Ryan, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
  • Registration: Click Here
IFRS Adoption Challenges
  • Date and time: 11 November 2009, 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET
  • Presenters: Tom Yoder, National Practice Lead, IFRS/ERP General Ledger, SAP; Nick Difazio, National Leadership Partner – IFRS, Deloitte & Touche LLP; Ian Wright, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
  • Registration: Click Here
IFRS Assessment
  • Date and time: October 22, 2009, 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET (This playback is available for 90 days after live broadcast)
  • Presenters: Pete Graham, Director, Solution Management, ERP Financials, SAP; Nick Difazio, National Leadership Partner – IFRS, Deloitte & Touche LLP; Glen Feinberg, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
  • Registration: Click Here

 

Deloitte Canada IFRS transition newsletters

31 Oct 2009

Deloitte Canada has published the October 2009 issue of their Countdown IFRS transition newsletter, to discuss practical issues Canadian companies are facing in IFRS transition as well as to provide an update on recent IFRS events.

Articles in this issue include:
  • Time sensitive considerations before your opening balance sheet date – the IFRS transition date
  • 'The Real Deal' – privately held companies
  • Omnibus Exposure Draft III – exposing existing IFRSs for incorporation into Canadian GAAP.
  • Canadian Securities Administrators Accounting Alerts
  • Deloitte Publications and Events
  • International Round-up
Click below for: You will find more information about financial reporting in Canada on our Canada Page.

Agenda project pages updated

30 Oct 2009

We have updated the following pages on IAS Plus to reflect the discussions and decisions at the IASB's joint meeting with the FASB on 26-28 October 2009:

IASB and FASB will meet monthly on convergence

30 Oct 2009

At an IFRS conference sponsored by the IASC Foundation and the AICPA in New York this week, IASB Chairman Sir David Tweedie and FASB Chairman Robert H Herz announced that the IASB and the FASB have agreed to meet monthly, for at least two days a month, starting in January 2010, to achieve the goal of converging IFRSs and US GAAP to the greatest extent possible by June 2011.

The joint meetings are expected to alternate between a video meeting in one month and a face-to-face meeting in the next month.

Notes from joint IASB-FASB meeting day 3

29 Oct 2009

The IASB and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board are holding a joint meeting at the FASB's offices in Norwalk, Connecticut USA, Monday to Wednesday 26-28 October 2009.

Click to go to the preliminary and unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers at the meeting.

Responses to EC review of accounting directives

29 Oct 2009

The European Commission has published a report on the approximately 100 responses received to the Commission's consultation paper on review of the Accounting Directives: Cutting Accounting Burden for Small Business–Review of the Accounting Directives.

Click to Download the Report (PDF 309k).

For the modernisation and streamlining proposal there was wide support. Creating a separate section of the directive outlining core accounting principles was also supported. Respondents were in favour of retaining prescriptive layouts as a way of increasing comparability and transparency, however a reduction in the detail and number of layouts was commonly suggested, as was a simplification of disclosures in the notes to the accounts. A modernisation of valuation rules was widely supported.

Considerable support was expressed for the idea of following a 'bottom-up' approach to the revised Accounting Directives. This would involve separately setting out all the accounting requirements for small companies first, and adding further separate requirements for both medium and large companies. There was also support for the preparation of cash flow statements by medium and large companies. Respondents also welcomed the ideas of electronic publication and the creation of a common accounting taxonomy.

Respondents had mixed views on the current Member State options allowing preparation of abridged accounts for small and medium-sized companies. Similarly, there was no clear position on whether the separate line items for 'extraordinary items' should be removed from the face of the profit and loss account.

There was little support for reducing the number of company categories or for a possible publication exemption for small companies. However, there was general satisfaction with current size criteria and threshold levels. A radical simplification proposal to require only key accounting figures from small companies was also met with scepticism.

In response to an open-ended invitation to comment on the long-term role of the Directives, commentators made the following comments about IFRSs:

There were 29 suggestions for closer alignment with IFRSs whilst 9 respondents were against such an approach.

On the question of IFRS for SMEs 20 respondents expressed support for it, commenting that as European medium-sized and large companies expand their cross-border activity there is an increasing need for a standardised financial reporting language. They argued that comparability is not possible under the current Accounting Directives due to Member State options and 'gold-plating'. Others (12 responses) saw the IFRS for SMEs as burdensome and inappropriate for EU SMEs. They questioned its usefulness in calculating tax liabilities and distributable profits.

Some said that the Accounting Directives should be a real alternative to IFRS and should therefore be more prescriptive and detailed. They thought that creditor protection should remain the fundamental principle and the Accounting Directives should focus on private companies' user needs. They were also in favour of increased harmonisation within the Directive, which they argued, could be achieved by eliminating the numerous current options.

Review of narrative reporting in the UK

29 Oct 2009

The United Kingdom Accounting Standards Board (ASB) has published Rising to the Challenge, the report of its review of the narrative reporting of 50 UK listed companies in 2008 and 2009.

The review focused on:
  • how companies are complying with the enhanced business review content requirements from the Companies Act 2006 (CA);
  • effective communication and presentation of the required content; and
  • areas that are leading to clutter in narrative reporting.
The review found that most companies are providing a good standard of information in their financial reviews, the description of objectives and strategies, and the provision of financial key performance indicators (KPIs). However, there are significant opportunities for improvement in the reporting of principal risks, trends and factors, contractual and other arrangements, and non-financial KPIs. Click to download:

 

Notes from joint IASB-FASB meeting day 2

28 Oct 2009

The IASB and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board are holding a joint meeting at the FASB's offices in Norwalk, Connecticut USA, Monday to Wednesday 26-28 October 2009.

Click to go to the preliminary and unofficial Notes Taken by Deloitte Observers at the meeting.

Heads Up on financial instruments

28 Oct 2009

Deloitte United States has published a Heads Up newsletter titled An Update on the FASB's and IASB's Joint Project on Financial Instruments.

This 20-page newsletter provides a comprehensive overview of the FASB's and IASB's approaches to changing the accounting for financial instruments reflecting the joint Board meeting discussion on 26 October 2009. Both boards expect to finalise their new accounting standards for financial instruments sometime in 2010. An excerpt from the newsletter:

The changes being contemplated by the two boards suggest that entities will soon need to prepare for radical changes to the manner in which they account for a wide range of financial instruments, including investments in debt and equity securities, loans, trade receivables, trade payables, interests in hybrid financial contracts, and an entity's own issued debt. While the changes will have the biggest impact for heavy users of financial instruments, such as banks, insurance companies, and other entities in the financial services industry, virtually no industry will be untouched. The changes affect how entities recognise, classify, and measure financial assets and financial liabilities; how they recognise and measure impairment of loans, receivables, and other financial assets; and how they apply hedge accounting to their derivative and hedging activities.

Currently, the two boards' approaches differ in important respects. For instance, the FASB's proposed approach calls for more fair value measurements than both current US GAAP and IFRSs, whereas the IASB's proposed approach retains a mixed-measurement attribute model that is more similar to current US GAAP and IFRSs, but prescribes different criteria for amortised cost measurements. In addition, the two boards' approaches to recognising and measuring credit losses differ.

Click to view Heads Up An Update on the FASB's and IASB's Joint Project on Financial Instruments (PDF 173k).

Deloitte IFRS newsletter in Spanish

28 Oct 2009

Deloitte (Colombia) has published the Spanish translation of the following IFRS publication:

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.