SWEDEN – Tredje AP-fonden, Sweden’s third national buffer fund known as AP3, says draft proposals for share-based payments drawn up by the International Accounting Standards Board are too complex and that disclosure requirements are too extensive.

AP3 chief executive Tomas Nicolin says the fund strongly agrees with the IASB’s plan to measure transactions at fair value and to use grant date measurement.

“However, we believe that the standard is in some respects too complex,” Nicolin says in a letter to IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie. He makes it clear that AP3’s comments “should be seen as an owner’s point of view”.

“We also find the disclosure requirements too extensive,” Nicolin says. He concedes that subject of management remuneration is “highly sensitive”.

“Therefore, in order to improve transparency and credibility, it is of vital importance to avoid overly complex accounting practices in this area.”

AP3 runs 125 billion crowns (13.5 billion euros) of the buffer fund capital in the Swedish public pension system.

The IASB released the draft proposals in November 2002 with the aim of ensuring that “an entity recognises all share-based payment transactions in its financial statements, measured at fair value, so as to provide high quality, transparent and comparable information to users of financial statements”.

The draft requires firms to recognise all share-based payment transactions in its financial statements.