Pre-meeting summaries for the December IASB meeting

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05 Dec 2016

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) will meet at its offices in London on 13–14 December 2016. We have posted our pre-meeting summaries for the meeting that allow you to follow the IASB’s decision making more closely. For each topic to be discussed we summarise the agenda papers made available by the IASB staff and point out the main issues to be discussed by the IASB and the staff recommendations.

Tuesday 13 December

The last meeting for 2016 starts with a brief oral update on IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers.

Two implementation issues are being discussed. The first is a proposal to amend IAS 19 Employee Benefits and IFRIC 14 IAS 19—The Limit on a Defined Benefit Asset, Minimum Funding Requirements and their Interaction. The second is to discuss whether or how to address issues that have arisen in the application of IFRS 9 Financial Instruments in relation to prepayment options and the assessment of the SPPI condition.

The Financial Instruments with the Characteristics of Equity Project has a discussion of derivatives on ‘own equity’, assessing how application of the model being proposed would be affected by seven variables.

The Rate Regulated Activities project returns to the Board for its first substantive discussion since July 2015. This is an education session, which means that the Board will not be asked to make any technical decisions. The session includes an analysis of the model being proposed.

Wednesday 14 December

The Wednesday sessions begin with a session on the Conceptual Framework. They will discuss papers on Measurement—redrafting the factors to consider in selecting a measurement basis; Business activities and long-term investment; Concepts of capital and capital maintenance; and Derecognition.

The Board will discuss its project on the Primary Financial Statements, focusing on the scope of the planned discussion paper. The staff are proposing a narrow scope project, with targeted improvements. The main focus will be on the Statement of Comprehensive Income, with some possible changes to the Statement of Cash Flows. The staff are also examining developing templates for a small number of industries.

The Disclosure Initiative has two topics—materiality and disclosures about restrictions on cash and cash equivalents.

The Board will conclude its discussions on the materiality practice statement and are recommending that the final document be prepared. Relatedly, the staff are now recommending that the Board issue a separate exposure draft to amend the definition of materiality in IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements. Previously the Board had decided to wait until they had received feedback on the Principles of Disclosure discussion paper.

For disclosures about restrictions on cash and cash equivalents, the staff are now recommending that the Board not proceed with the proposed amendments to IAS 7 Statement of Cash Flows that were exposed in 2014.

The meeting concludes with an education session to inform the Board of the upcoming release of the IFRS Taxonomy Update for the 2015/2016 common practice project, which focused on agriculture, leisure, franchises, retail, and financial institutions.

More information

Our pre-meeting summaries are available on our December meeting note page and will be supplemented with our popular meeting notes after the meeting.

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