All articles by Stephen Bouvier – Page 23
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Can they fix it?
Stephen Bouvier sets out the problems facing the IFRIC interpretation committee on the treatment of single-A corporate bonds in discounting pension liabilities
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Some good IAS19 news
And the good news is praise for IAS19. As an antidote to the usual depressive outlook of this column, this month we have 800 words about what IAS19 does well.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: If at first you don’t succeed...
It was only a matter of time before the issues left unresolved by the International Accounting Standards Board’s 2006 pensions accounting project landed on the desk of the International Financial Reporting Standards interpretations committee.
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Pensions Accounting: A man on the moon? Easy
IFRIC Draft Interpretation D9, Employee Benefit Plans with a Promised Return on Contributions or Notional Contributions, refuses to die
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Willingly deceived
The world wants to be deceived and deceived it will be. The Roman satirist Petronius’s acerbic critique of human nature is a convenient introduction to an issue in front of the IFRS interpretations committee in May. It all starts with a letter from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).
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Pensions Accounting: Don’t hold your breath
In short, the answer is ‘no’. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is not going to add a pensions accounting project to its agenda.
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Features
Garbage in, garbage out
If you work in accountancy you will have been far too busy since 2009 with the chaos created by David Tweedie out of the International Accounting Standards Board’s workplan to worry too much about administrative matters over at the board’s Cannon Street headquarters. That means there is a real danger that you could have missed an item on the board’s agenda for 21 March 2012 about operating procedures at the board’s International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretations Committee.
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Features
Property valuation
Any business that wants to stay in business needs to recognise revenue. And conveniently enough, recent machinations at the IASB have combined in a perfect storm of revenue recognition, the attractiveness of Far East property as an asset class, secrecy and oversight.
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Features
J’en ai marre
IASB project manager Denise Durant’s opening words to the 18 January IFRS Interpretations Committee meeting were innocuous enough: “We are not discussing the proposed amendment to IAS 1 derived from the conceptual framework because this amendment was proposed directly by the board and not by the committee.” Instead, she explained, the amendment “is going to be discussed at a later stage by the board.”
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Features
Lost in accounting
It looks like 2012 is going to be busy for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as significant projects towards completion, some affecting pensions accounting. In the first quarter of the year the feedback statement on the agenda consultation process will be published. If you are expecting this to be a simple binary choice some time before Easter that adds up to ‘Yes, we will do pension plan measurement issues,’ or ‘No, we won’t,’ then think again. The board will only take that decision after it has held a series of roundtable meetings and tied in the agenda process with the conclusions reached in the entirely separate strategic review.
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Features
Updating the update
Our glorious G20 leaders have charged the IASB with two tasks in relation to financial instruments accounting: reduce the complexity of accounting standards for financial instruments; and strengthen accounting recognition of loan-loss provisions by incorporating a broader range of credit information.
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Features
Leave it to technocrats?
Those who believe that governance by technocrat will solve Italy’s ills should think again. The IASB is currently working on a three-bucket approach for financial asset impairment. The idea is that newly originated or purchased loans – the model must work for both – are allocated by an entity to one of three buckets. And in very general terms, assets will move from one bucket to another in order to reflect deteriorating credit quality and credit losses. This is the board’s third stab at developing an impairment model since 2009.
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NewsPensions accounting: Tactics before strategy?
Stephen Bouvier laments the fuzziness of the IASB's consultation on its agenda.
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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.
