Financial Reporting

As part of the decade-long convergence debate, the.SEC recently offered a hybrid approach as a possible method of incorporating IFRS into the U.S. financial reporting regime.    
This approach, colloquially referred to as “condorsement” (as… READ MORE ›

BNP Paribas has reclassified almost all its peripheral Euro-zone sovereign exposures, taking advantage of an accounting provision brought in after the sub-prime crisis that allows banks to move assets into their loans and receivables portfolio if they are deemed… READ MORE ›

On 7 July the U.S. SEC sponsored a series of roundtables designed to help determine whether incorporating International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into the U.S. financial reporting system is in the best interest of… READ MORE ›

Several years ago, when then-Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox advocated for the required tagging of financial disclosures by U.S. companies, both large and small investors were perceived as the main… READ MORE ›

The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) has weighed in on the issue of what information investors should receive in the report from a company’s auditor. In a 9 June letter to the Public Company Accounting… READ MORE ›

Traveling back to the U.S. from the recent CFA Institute Annual Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, I had time to reflect on a portion of the program dedicated to ethical issues in financial reporting, part… READ MORE ›

Similar to market crises and accountancy-related corporate scandals that have occurred in the past, the extent to which auditors act in the interests of investors has yet again been brought into sharp focus in the aftermath of the 2007-2009… READ MORE ›

CFA Institute along with its advisory committee, the Corporate Disclosure Policy Council (CDPC), recently held its annual meeting with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
The meeting was… READ MORE ›

When the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) Office of the Chief Auditor (OCA) presented an update on 22 March on outreach to investors and others about changes to the auditor’s reporting model, it cited… READ MORE ›

For those working for accounting firms or public companies that file with the U.S. SEC, the regulator’s adoption of the 2011 U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy likely appeared on your radar. The same people likely took… READ MORE ›

CFA Institute along with its advisory committee, the Corporate Disclosure Policy Council (CDPC), recently held its annual meeting with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), available by audio webcast.
The 11 February meeting was… READ MORE ›

One of the most worrisome items to emerge from the 2008 financial market wreckage was the realization that Lehman Brothers had deliberately used accounting gimmicks to hide tens of billions of dollars of leverage from… READ MORE ›

We sometimes hear criticisms of our position on fair value accounting that suggest we’re taking an academic view of things with dubious relevance to economic reality. Interesting, then, to read Jack Cieselski’s analysis… READ MORE ›

We are in the midst of one of the most acrimonious debates over accounting rules in decades. What is at stake is whether banks will have to value their loan portfolios and report the results… READ MORE ›