I'm honored to have been selected to give the keynote speech at the American Accounting Association's Northeast Region Meeting. I'm on right after breakfast on Friday, October 28th. As you might have guessed, the topic I have been asked to…
Last June, the IASB issued revisions to IAS 19, Employee Benefits. The accompanying press release would have us believe that the five-year project resulting in incremental changes to the accounting for pension costs are a significant improvement; unfortunately, they are…
Two of my favorite columnists, Floyd Norris and Jonathan Weil have put in their two cents worth on the implications of the Greek bond accounting issues brought to the fore by the IASB's letter to the European Securities and Markets…
In my previous post, I provided my reactions to Hans Hoogervorst's recent letter to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), in which he expressed concern for the pie-in-the-sky numbers produced by some EU banks on their Greek bonds classified…
Yesterday, Han Hoogervorst, the IASB chair, sent a letter to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), in which he expressed concern for the pie-in-the-sky numbers produced by EU banks on their Greek bonds classified as 'available for sale' (AFS).…
The SEC has finally conceded that its efforts to adopt IFRS have failed. Damage control has begun in earnest, but the ship is still taking on water. The SEC took a tentative poke at the problem last May with the publication…
Nothing good comes from bad accounting, and many of the bad things that happen are easy to predict: excess bonuses to management, negative NPV investments, underfunding of pension plans, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yet, the instance I'm writing about in this…
For a standards setter, Hans Hoogervorst, the new IASB chairman, doesn't know much about accounting. By his own frank admission, he wasn't even very interested in the subject until after the financial crisis hit in 2008, and he seems almost…
Every time I write a post, I might receive a couple of non-spam comments, and perhaps a few more private emails intended for my eyes only. Most of the feedback is positive, and even encouraging. Nonetheless, I am by nature…
If IFRS incorporation is supposed to be some fantastic opportunity for achieving one set of accounting standards worldwide, then why was no one at the SEC's Roundtable on IFRS jumping for joy at the prospect? You would think that someone, anyone,…