Financial Statement Presentation

Introduction and objective

In April 2004, the IASB and the FASB decided to undertake a joint project with the aim of defining a standard for organizing and presenting information in financial statements in order to improve their usefulness.

Summary

The convergence project is divided into three phases:
• Phase A took into account the statements that constitute a complete set of financial statements and the periods for which they must be submitted. Following Phase A, on 6 September 2007 the IASB published a revised version of IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements, which came into force on 1 January 2009. The standard was approved on 17 December 2008 by the European Commission, Regulation 1274/2008. The FASB, however, decided to consider the problems of Phases A and B together, and thus has not published a paper on Phase A. The new IAS 1 introduces comprehensive income and has changed the presentation of the statement of changes in equity. The new version of the standard converges with Statement No. 130 Reporting Comprehensive Income of the FASB.
• Phase B deals with more substantive issues relating to the presentation and disclosure of the information in the financial statements. This phase is divided into three sub-projects:
– the first concerning the definition of a standard (IFRS X) to replace the current IAS 1 and IAS 7. In this connection, the IASB issued Discussion Paper Preliminary Views on Financial Statement Presentation in October 2008;
– the second concerns ED Presentation of Items of Other Comprehensive Income (Proposed Amendments to IAS 1), which deals with some aspects about the presentation of items in OCI;
– the third aims to develop a common definition of discontinued operations and a similar disclosure for assets under disposal.
• Phase C concerns the presentation and display of financial information in interim financial reports.

IASB work plan

For projects of Phase B, this is the schedule:
– Replacement of IAS 1 and IAS 7: the publication of its ED is expected after June 2011. The final version of the Standard is instead expected by the end of 2011;
– Presentation of items of other comprehensive income: the final standard is expected by June 2011;
– Discontinued operations: there will be a re-exposal after June 2011, with the issuing of the final standard by the end of 2011.

To summarize, the following table shows for each part, the timing and documentation produced by the IASB so far.
Please, find attached also a note on the discussion about the IASB’s staff draft of the Exposure Draft Financial Statement Presentation (the Draft ED) held at the outreach event organised jointly by EFRAG and the Organismo Italiano di Contabilità (OIC), the Italian National Standard Setter, on 26 November 2010 and a feedback report, prepared by EFRAG, on meetings with European constituents.

 For more information, please refer to the IASB website.