All articles by Stephen Bouvier – Page 25
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Features
Coffee-break standard
For International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) chairman Sir David Tweedie, a short coffee break is also a chance to determine how businesses should present defined benefit (DB) pension costs in their financial statements.
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Features
The OCI trap
At its 23 January meeting, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) voted to scrap the options in IAS19 that allow pension plan sponsors to defer the recognition of what are often referred to as actuarial gains and losses in a entity’s profit or loss account.
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Features
A page or a phone book?
In case anyone has forgotten, the objective underpinning the IASB’s bid to overhaul IAS19 is to ensure that the users of financial statements, or analysts, have access to what the board likes to call timely and decision-useful information.
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News
'Flawed' IASB pensions measure to go in P&L
[15:15 CET 05-02] GLOBAL - The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has tentatively cleared a staff proposal that could see so-called pension plan remeasurements go straight into profit and loss on a company’s balance sheet, and possibly net of tax.
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FeaturesDebt dilemmas
The chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), Sir David Tweedie, might do well to listen a little more closely to Berlin than to Washington. In line with problems outlined in November last year by the executive chairman of Germany’s DRSC accountancy standard setter, Heinz-Joachim Neubürger (see end), ...
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Features
IASB continues its comedy of errors
Further deliberation of the International Accouting Standards Board’s (IASB) preliminary views on pensions accounting kicked-off pretty much as we would expect, with staff failing to meet a self-imposed deadline, and a dose of unnecessary secrecy. The plan, said Andrea Pryde, on 19 November, was to “present an overview of the ...
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Features
Happy Honecker: censorship lives
In the former East Germany, the Honecker regime cunningly blanked-out maps west of Berlin in a bid to foil escapes. This is an approach that the IASB’s pension team appears to have taken literally. An example is Paragraph 50 of the observer notes for the board’s December 2007 discussions: “A ...
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News
Criticism of IASB shifts to its corporate structure
[16:30 CEST 07-10] GLOBAL - Swiss pharmaceutical and diagnostics giant Roche has slammed proposals by the IASB's parent body, the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, to create a seven-member oversight body comprised mainly of securities regulators to oversee the activities of the IASCF's trustees.
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NewsNew face to take on IASB pensions review
[16:30 CEST 26-09] GLOBAL - The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has moved to reassure constituents its pensions accounting project has adequate staffing following the departure last week of project team member Jenny Lee.
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Features
Exceptions to the rule
The message from Anne McGeachin on international financial reporting standards (IFRS) was clear: "The IFRS must be applicable worldwide, and we therefore cannot go around exempting jurisdictions.
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News
IASB proposals could force status change for BASF pensions
[14:45 CEST 15-09] GERMANY - German multinational BASF AG has revealed around 95% of its active-member pension obligation will shift to the IASB's proposed fair value pension measure, if the standard-setter's recently-published proposals to reform pension accounting become GAAP.
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NewsGerman pensions face 'near-full value' shift under IASB reform
[15:45 CEST 10-06] GERMANY - Pension funds and consultants have warned German pension funds will face a major funding upheaval under the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) proposed reforms to pensions accounting.
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News
IASB hints at watering down of pensions review
[16:20 CEST 05-06] GLOBAL - The International Accounting Standards Board could be on the verge of scaling back the scope of its Phase I project to address pensions accounting.
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Features
Dead man walking
Question: What starts with ‘P’ and ends in chaos? Answer: The International Accounting Standards Board’s Phase I pensions accounting project. It has all been a bad dream. That was the message from the 21 April joint board meeting in London between the IASB and the US Financial Accounting Standards. At ...
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Features
Varying value of the same promise
Charles Rodgers, a London-based pensions consultant at Watson Wyatt, has a problem: the long-awaited International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) due process discussion document on pensions accounting. His issue? The board’s new contribution-based promise definition and its proposal that the world’s bean counters should account for pension promises according to how ...
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News
IASB may scale back pensions accounting project
[12:30 CEST 23-04] GLOBAL - The future of the International Accounting Standards Boards' due process discussion document on pensions accounting is in doubt, following public comments by IASB research director Wayne Upton.
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Features
What price fair value?
It is a given that any change to pensions accounting will inevitably produce earnings volatility. A Georgia Tech research team led by Dr Charles W. Mulford has recently attempted to answer the question: by how much? Starting with an analysis of “changes to the balance sheet and its effects on ...
