All articles by Stephen Bouvier – Page 23
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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.
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Features
Greek myths
Unless you managed to enjoy a proper holiday this summer, you cannot fail to have missed the rumbling Greek debt crisis. Hans Hoogervorst’s summer holiday seems to have been neatly bookended on 4 August by a letter written in his capacity as IASB chairman to Steve Maijoor, head of the European Securities and Markets Authority, and the publication of that letter on 31 August. Europe’s banks, it seems, might not have been observing the spirit of IAS 39’s impairment methodology.
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Features
IAS19 washes whiter
Stephen Bouvier assesses some reactions to the revised IAS19 accounting provisions on employee benefits
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Features
Pointless chatter
Without any irony, the IASB is about to give you the opportunity to take part in a consultation process on the future shape of its entire work plan. As a 15 June IASB meeting paper explains: “The consultation process was introduced by the trustees of the IFRS Foundation in 2010 in response to comments received during the constitution review of the IFRS Foundation.” A good time to revisit pension plan measurement? Reality check.
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NewsAdvisers give qualified welcome to IAS19 amendment package
Move will see enhanced disclosure requirements, as well as removal of IAS19 'corridor'.
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Features
It’s a target, stupid!
Any regular reader of this column would know that the IASB and the US FASB would hardly dare fail to miss their self-assigned 30 June 2011 deadline for convergence of their respective accounting literature.
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Features
Dial-a-psychic
International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) workplans have tended to be less reliable sources of information than a dial-a-psychic.
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Features
The L’Oréal principle
As if the IASB’s pensions project was not already bizarre enough, the 16 February 2011 meeting set the scene for one of the most bewildering exchanges between a board member and the staff yet.
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Features
Plan the work, work the plan
Another month, another discussion about other comprehensive income. But more than that, the extraordinary meeting of the International Accounting Standards Board on 2 February served to underline a maxim that the London-based standard setter has consistently ignored: plan the work and work the plan.
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Features
Repeating the pensions mistake
Think back to 2006. Armed with a vague plan for its supposedly joint effort with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) set out to address the measurement challenges presented by so-called contribution-based promises. For its part, we were led to understand that the ...
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Features
Presenting Failures
The IASB’s discussion of pensions accounting in November posed some of the hitherto unanswered questions about the drive to converge IFRS and US GAAP: at precisely what time are accounting standards going to be set?
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Features
Corridor demolished
The corridor is no more. On 20 October, members of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) voted to scrap the IAS19 deferral mechanism. In its place comes the net interest approach.
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NewsDelayed recognition consigned to scrap heap as IASB sticks with net interest
GLOBAL – The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has rejected a staff proposal calling on the board to drop the proposed net-interest approach for the presentation of defined benefit (DB) pension plan components in an entity's statement of comprehensive income (SOCI).
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Features
Risk-analysis wonderland
In its recently published exposure draft on pensions accounting, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) proposed that entities should present a sensitivity analysis to show how changes in key actuarial assumptions might reasonably be expected to affect:
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Features
Reality check
The read across from US GAAP to IFRS is far from easy, despite the efforts of consultants such as Towers Watson and auditors KPMG to break it down. For example, the pensions comparison in the August 2009 edition of KPMG’s ‘IFRS Compared to US GAAP’, runs to 17 pages.
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Features
Better late than never
On 29 April the IASB published its proposals to revamp IAS 19, employee benefits, which “aims to make fundamental improvements to the recognition, presentation and disclosure of defined benefit plans by mid-2011. These improvements will make it easier for users of financial statements to understand how defined benefit (DB) plans affect a company’s financial position, financial performance and cash flows.”
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Features
Open and above board
A chat about catching a plane would seem on the face of it to be a fairly innocuous event. Indeed, amid much fanfare, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il recently jetted into China. Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Sir David Tweedie’s staff, however, demanded that his trip to Japan be shrouded in more secrecy than the dictator’s.
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News
IASB amendments sensible, say pension consultants
GLOBAL – Proposals for employers to account immediately for all estimated changes in the cost of providing defined benefit (DB) pension schemes have been cautiously welcomed by pension consultants.
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Features
Do as I say, not as I do
Consider this statement by International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) member Patricia McConnell in June 2006: “Is General Motors necessarily bankrupt because it has a huge pension obligation? No, as long as you can look at future obligations and say it will pay down that liability.”
