And I thought the summer was supposed to be a slow time.
Lots of big developments for a Monday in August:
IFRS and SEC Roadmap
The SEC just posted a notice that the long-awaited roadmap to international financial reporting standards (IFRS) will be announced at a public meeting on Wed, Aug 27, according to the “Sunshine Act Notice.” The notice says:
“The Commission will consider whether to propose a Roadmap for the potential use by U.S. issuers for purposes of their filings with the Commission of financial statements prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”) as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. As part of the Roadmap, the Commission will also consider whether to propose amendments to various rules and forms that would permit early use of IFRS by a limited number of U.S. issuers.”
I think we will see a 2014 target date for public companies. Let’s see.
Big IDEA for XBRL
I applaud the SEC”s efforts to modernize our financial reporting and making it available to the “retail investor.”
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox unveiled the successor to the SEC’s 1980s-era EDGAR database, a new system based on XBRL that will give investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about pubic companies and mutual funds. The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Application. According to Chairman Cox, “IDEA will ensure that the SEC continues to stay ahead of the needs of investors.”
David Blaszkowsky, director of the SEC’s Office of Interactive Disclosure, added, “After 75 years of document-based static financial reporting, whether in paper documents or in electronic equivalents, it is exciting to see the SEC poised to cross the ‘data threshold’ and help investors receive financial information that is dynamic, usable and ready to go as they make their investment decisions. And when the investor wins, so does the public company, fund, or other filer who simultaneously benefits from greater transparency and trust in our markets. By tapping the power of interactive data to tear down barriers to quick and meaningful investment information, markets can become fairer and more efficient while investors can possess far better quality data than was ever possible before.”
Did you know you can follow the SEC on Twitter? These guys really do get it!
I hope we can get the SEC to do a demo of IDEA on CPA Island in Second Life…
More on these XBRL developments can be found at Hitachi’s XBRL Blog.
Did you see our XBRL session in Second Life? Check it out on our blog post and click on the archived video hyperlink.
CIFiR: SEC’s Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting
This is also known as the “Pozen Committee” and offers recommendations to work toward more simplicity in our financial reporting system. The report is thorough and includes some major recommendations in four categories:
- Substantive complexity
- Standards-setting process
- Audit process and compliance
- Delivering financial information
Read the report in its entirety here.
PCAOB upheld as constitutional
On another note, the constitutional challenge to the formation of the PCAOB (and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) has been rejected by a federal appeals court in D.C. Washington Post reporter David Hilzenrath has the full story here.
How’s that for busy summer week? What is your bet on the convergence date for IFRS?