Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

The great thing about people who represent an industry being affected by an accounting standard is that they are highly motivated to provide content.  Bill Bosco sent me a number of files for this week’s Roundtable.  The ELFA comment letter on leasing discusses both lessor and lessee accounting, and objects strongly to the notion that [...] Read more > >

Bill Bosco, who will be our speaker at today’s Roundtable, sent along the text of his comment letter on leasing to the IASB.  Here it is, in its entirety: Sir David Tweedie                                                                              July 12, 2009 Chairman IASB Dear Sir: I support the theory that operating lease obligations arising from material operating leases should be capitalized.  The issue of capitalizing operating [...] Read more > >

Bill Bosco, who will be our speaker at today’s Roundtable, sent along the text of his comment letter on leasing to the IASB.  Here it is, in its entirety: Sir David Tweedie                                                                              July 12, 2009 Chairman IASB Dear Sir: I support the theory that operating lease obligations arising from material operating leases should be capitalized.  The issue of capitalizing operating [...] Read more > >

The FASRI Roundtable this week (11am ET, Weds Mar 31, 2010) will be lead by Bill Bosco, a member of the IASB/FASB International Working Group on leas accounting, Principal of Leasing101, and long time member of the Accounting committee of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA), a trade association representing the $650 billion dollar [...] Read more > >

In class yesterday, I stumbled upon an interesting apparent inconsistency between accounting for pensions and the accounting for compensated employee absences, which I had taught several weeks ago. When teaching my students about accruing for vacation pay, I observed that it seemed that if we knew for certain that employees were likely to get a raise [...] Read more > >

About a year ago (March 12, 2009) the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Entities held a hearing titled “Mark-to-Market Accounting: Practices and Implications.”  The Committee members directed several hours of fairly hostile questioning to FASB Chairman Bob Herz and SEC Chief Accountant Jim Kroeker.  If you have not seen [...] Read more > >

Mark Evans of Indiana University will lead our next roundtable discussion, Wednesday March 3rd, 11am ET).  Here is the abstract from his recent paper, written with Leslie Hodder and Pat Hopkins, exploring fair value in commercial banks: For a sample of commercial banks during 1994–2008, we find that accumulated fair value adjustments for investment securities are [...] Read more > >

The SEC essentially punted today on the decision to adopt IFRS in the U.S.  Acknowledging that the SEC is in the same position they were in November 2008 (when the proposed roadmap was originally issued), Mary Schapiro said the SEC hopes to be in a position by 2011 to make this decision. One of the [...] Read more > >

The February 23rd (4pm ET) Roundtable will feature a discussion of Emissions Trading Schemes, led by University of Colorado research Naomi Soderstrom, along with insights from the Assistant Project Manager on the FASB's Emission Trading Schemes project, Shayne Kuhaneck. Click here for details on the session. * UPDATE: The archived video of this Round [...] Read more > >

The February 23rd Roundtable will feature a discussion of Emissions Trading Schemes, led by University of Colorado research Naomi Soderstrom, along with insights from the Assistant Project Manager on the FASB’s Emission Trading Schemes project, Shayne Kuhaneck. Many accountants have only passing familiarity with Emissions Trading Schemes.  As the FASB project page describes, Emission trading schemes to [...] Read more > >