Pensions Accounting – Page 24
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News
IASB confirms employee contributions amendments
Question mark hangs over Standards Board’s plans for IAS 19
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Features
Conceptually challenged?
Back in April, the International Accounting Standards Board was debating the content of its discussion paper on the International Financial Reporting Standards conceptual framework.
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Features
Accounting: But what does it mean?
The April meeting of the International Accounting Standards Board set the scene for yet another rushed consideration of draft chapters for inclusion in the conceptual framework discussion paper. The document is to be published in July.
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Features
Accounting: Hoogervorst decrees
Unless you are an actuary, trustee or policy wonk, it is unlikely that the IASB’s conceptual framework project – the basis for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) – is high on your agenda.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A history lesson
In order to understand why the IASB and the IFRS Interpretations Committee will struggle to identify a principle behind the IAS19 discount-rate objective, let us delve into the history of how the board’s predecessor, the International Accounting Standards Committee, arrived at the AA-corporate bond rate ‘rule’.
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News
Lloyds, RBS reflect on impact of changes to IAS19 accounting
UK – Changes to accounting standards would have increased losses, UK banks say.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Discount-rate saga runs
Back in January, this column posed a simple question: Can they fix it? The ‘it’ was the so-called six-A discount rate question.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: IAS19 in 2013
The priorities facing defined-benefit plan sponsors who report under IAS19 during 2013 split neatly between short-term volatility concerns and the longer-term challenge of implementing IASB’s recent revisions to the standard, say two leading consultants who spoke to IPE about their priorities for 2013.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Some good IAS19 news
And the good news is praise for IAS19. As an antidote to the usual depressive outlook of this column, this month we have 800 words about what IAS19 does well.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: If at first you don’t succeed...
It was only a matter of time before the issues left unresolved by the International Accounting Standards Board’s 2006 pensions accounting project landed on the desk of the International Financial Reporting Standards interpretations committee.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A man on the moon? Easy
IFRIC Draft Interpretation D9, Employee Benefit Plans with a Promised Return on Contributions or Notional Contributions, refuses to die
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Willingly deceived
The world wants to be deceived and deceived it will be. The Roman satirist Petronius’s acerbic critique of human nature is a convenient introduction to an issue in front of the IFRS interpretations committee in May. It all starts with a letter from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Don’t hold your breath
In short, the answer is ‘no’. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is not going to add a pensions accounting project to its agenda.
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Features
Garbage in, garbage out
If you work in accountancy you will have been far too busy since 2009 with the chaos created by David Tweedie out of the International Accounting Standards Board’s workplan to worry too much about administrative matters over at the board’s Cannon Street headquarters. That means there is a real danger that you could have missed an item on the board’s agenda for 21 March 2012 about operating procedures at the board’s International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretations Committee.
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Features
Property valuation
Any business that wants to stay in business needs to recognise revenue. And conveniently enough, recent machinations at the IASB have combined in a perfect storm of revenue recognition, the attractiveness of Far East property as an asset class, secrecy and oversight.
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Features
J’en ai marre
IASB project manager Denise Durant’s opening words to the 18 January IFRS Interpretations Committee meeting were innocuous enough: “We are not discussing the proposed amendment to IAS 1 derived from the conceptual framework because this amendment was proposed directly by the board and not by the committee.” Instead, she explained, the amendment “is going to be discussed at a later stage by the board.”
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Features
Lost in accounting
It looks like 2012 is going to be busy for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as significant projects towards completion, some affecting pensions accounting. In the first quarter of the year the feedback statement on the agenda consultation process will be published. If you are expecting this to be a simple binary choice some time before Easter that adds up to ‘Yes, we will do pension plan measurement issues,’ or ‘No, we won’t,’ then think again. The board will only take that decision after it has held a series of roundtable meetings and tied in the agenda process with the conclusions reached in the entirely separate strategic review.
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Features
Updating the update
Our glorious G20 leaders have charged the IASB with two tasks in relation to financial instruments accounting: reduce the complexity of accounting standards for financial instruments; and strengthen accounting recognition of loan-loss provisions by incorporating a broader range of credit information.
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Features
Leave it to technocrats?
Those who believe that governance by technocrat will solve Italy’s ills should think again. The IASB is currently working on a three-bucket approach for financial asset impairment. The idea is that newly originated or purchased loans – the model must work for both – are allocated by an entity to one of three buckets. And in very general terms, assets will move from one bucket to another in order to reflect deteriorating credit quality and credit losses. This is the board’s third stab at developing an impairment model since 2009.
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Features
Tactics before strategy?
Finally on 26 July, the International Accounting Standards Board launched its public consultation on the shape of its future agenda. “In particular,” it would seem, “IASB is seeking feedback on how it should balance the development of financial reporting with the maintenance of IFRSs and – with consideration of our time and resource constraints – those areas of financial reporting that should be given the highest priority for further improvement,” It is perhaps the most succinct statement you will find anywhere in the consultation paperwork.
