I have completed a paper Toward a Measurement Framework for Financial Reporting by Profit-oriented Entities (132 pages) that has been published by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) at the request of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board (AcSB). The paper proposes a measurement framework that is reasoned from fundamental premises about economic business purposes, [...] Read more > >
In prepping a class session on convergence, I found a March 2012 speech by Meredith Cross, the SEC’s Director of Corp Fin, that raised an interesting possibility. A select group of foreign companies that cross-list their securities in the U.S. and prepare their financial statements using IFRS as issued by the IASB might have to [...] Read more > >
If you were to pose a question to any undergraduate accounting major with familiarity about IFRS as to what is the primary distinction between IFRS and U.S. GAAP, you’d probably get the response that IFRS is principles based and U.S. GAAP is rules based. It’s a notion that was promoted by former IASB Chairman Sir [...] Read more > >
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act is grabbing media headlines recently. Advocates for the bill suggest it will stimulate IPOs by removing burdensome regulations. Critics charge that the regulations are there for a reason, and removing them will set the stage for history to repeat itself. Most of the attention has been on how [...] Read more > >
The LIFO inventory valuation method is a big difference between IFRS and US GAAP that standard setters have left untouched. I have heard many people question what will become of LIFO if the SEC decides to go forward with some kind of IFRS implementation in the US. Perhaps this would be the first “carve-in” for US [...] Read more > >
In case you missed the press release yesterday and the FASRI Roundtables a couple weeks ago, the Financial Accounting Foundation is beginning post-implementation reviews on two standards; SFAS 141R on Business Combinations, and SFAS 131 on Segment Disclosures. The FAF issued its inaugural post-implementation review report a few weeks ago on FIN 48. The report was generally positive [...] Read more > >
I am struggling with the FASB’s treatment of precision and where it belongs in the conceptual framework. I believe that they are now thinking it affects relevance. They are clear that it is not part of their definition of reliability. The latter is not, in my own opinion, an issue. But I’m struggling with it [...] Read more > >
A friend pointed me to an Accounting Today article that reports the release of SEC documents exploring IFRS. One of them compares IFRS and GAAP for most transactions (some active MOU projects are omitted). Another assesses how IFRS is being applied in practice. I have not had the chance to study these yet, but here [...] Read more > >
As the financial instrument project moves ahead, the timeline shows a final accounting standards update is to be issued in the fourth quarter, many may think there are not really many changes from the old SFAS 115. The current proposal will still have financial assets measured at amortized cost and at fair value with unrealized [...] Read more > >
Last week, the FASB held an education session on the Disclosure Framework project. They continue to view disclosure categories as: entity-wide disclosures, line-item disclosures, and disclosures related to conditions not recognized in the financials with related subcategories. This session centered on the goals of the project and developing qualitative principles. There is also a coordination [...] Read more > >