Hans Hoogervorst speaks about the reasons behind the IASB's work

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16 Apr 2015

At the IFRS Foundation trustees’ stakeholder event in Toronto, Canada, IASB Chairman Hans Hoogervorst presented a mission statement for the IASB and the IFRS Foundation explaining not only ‘what’ but also ‘why’ the organisation does what it does.

The statement Mr Hoogervorst presented was, in a nutshell:

Our mission is to develop IFRS that bring transparency, accountability and efficiency to financial markets around the world. Our work serves the public interest by fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in the global economy.

Mr Hoogervorst went on to explain that the transparency was to be achieved by enhancing the quality and international comparability of financial information, accountability would improve by reducing the information gap between the providers of capital and the people to whom they have entrusted their money, and economic efficiency would be enhanced by helping investors to identify opportunities and risks across the world. These three aspects together would then make up the contribution of IFRSs to the public good.

As always, Mr Hoogervorst also touched upon adoption of IFRSs around the world. One of his points was commending Canada, that has close ties to the United States, for adopting IFRSs although "there has been no further breakthrough for IFRS in the United States". He also warned against giving up whatever convergence has so far been achieved. On revenue recognition he stated:

Completing IFRS 15 took more than a decade of hard work by both Boards, three formal rounds of public consultation, thousands of hours of meetings and countless outreach meetings. The perfect accounting standard does not exist. An endless process of tinkering will certainly not bring us close to perfection.

The full transcript of Chairman Hoogervorst’s speech is available on the IASB’s website.

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