...Financial Crisis Advisory Group July 28, 2009 To the Members of the International Accounting Standards Board and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board: On behalf of the members of the Financial Crisis Advisory Group (FCAG), we are pleased to present our report to the Boards about the standard-setting implications of the global financial crisis. We believe that confidence in the transparency and integrity of financial reporting is critically important to global financial stability and sound economic growth. We hope that our conclusions and recommendations will be helpful to the Boards as they work together to simplify and improve accounting standards on financial instruments and other key areas highlighted by the crisis. The FCAG will be meeting in December to review the progress that has been made. In the meantime, we are available to assist the Boards in their efforts. Sincerely, Harvey J. Goldschmid Co-chair Hans Hoogervorst Co-chair cc: Gerrit Zalm, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation John J. Brennan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Financial Accounting Foundation Report of the Financial Crisis Advisory Group – July 28, 2009 Table of Contents Page I. INTRODUCTION _________________________________________________________________________ 1 II. PRINCIPLE 1: Effective Financial Reporting____________________________________________________ 3 Intersection of Prudential Regulation...
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...Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 8 September 2010 Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting Chapter 1, The Objective of General Purpose Financial Reporting, and Chapter 3, Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information a replacement of FASB Concepts Statements No. 1 and No. 2 Copyright © 2010 by Financial Accounting Foundation. All rights reserved. Content copyrighted by Financial Accounting Foundation may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Financial Accounting Foundation. Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 8 September 2010 Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting Chapter 1, The Objective of General Purpose Financial Reporting, and Chapter 3, Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information a replacement of FASB Concepts Statements No. 1 and No. 2 Financial Accounting Standards Board of the Financial Accounting Foundation 401 MERRITT 7, PO BOX 5116, NORWALK, CONNECTICUT 06856-5116 Statements of Financial Accounting Concepts This Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts (Concepts Statement) is one of a series of publications in the Board’s Conceptual Framework for financial accounting and reporting. Since the publication of the last Concepts Statement, the Board has undertaken a project with the International Accounting Standards...
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...Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 8 September 2010 Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting Chapter 1, The Objective of General Purpose Financial Reporting, and Chapter 3, Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information a replacement of FASB Concepts Statements No. 1 and No. 2 Copyright © 2010 by Financial Accounting Foundation. All rights reserved. Content copyrighted by Financial Accounting Foundation may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Financial Accounting Foundation. Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 8 September 2010 Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting Chapter 1, The Objective of General Purpose Financial Reporting, and Chapter 3, Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information a replacement of FASB Concepts Statements No. 1 and No. 2 Financial Accounting Standards Board of the Financial Accounting Foundation 401 MERRITT 7, PO BOX 5116, NORWALK, CONNECTICUT 06856-5116 Statements of Financial Accounting Concepts This Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts (Concepts Statement) is one of a series of publications in the Board’s Conceptual Framework for financial accounting and reporting. Since the publication of the last Concepts Statement, the Board has undertaken a project with the International Accounting Standards...
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...Paper ACC 305: Intermediate Accounting I The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was established in 1973 in order to create and develop standards of financial accounting and reporting for the general use of the public and, in particular, users of financial information including auditors, creditors and investors. This financial information is standardized for greater clarity for the guidance and education of users (FASB org, 2009a). The primary purpose of FASB as a private and non-profit organization is to develop Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in the United States. The FASB sets-up accounting standards for public companies in the U.S. under the mandate of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Hence, the FASB oversees the financial security; stability and overall well-being of the U.S. economy in its role of ensuring the standardization and credibility of financial information that are made available to the public. The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) that was established in 1972 as an independent and private sector organization (FAF, 2009) handle the general oversight, administration and finances of the FASB. The FASB is composed of seven full time board members that have extensive knowledge and experience in accounting, finance and business, as well as ethical concern that public interests are well represented in matters pertaining to financial accounting and reporting. The board members are chosen from diverse backgrounds in the field...
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...Generally Accepted Accounting Principles Introduction In the past, the financial statements of health care organizations’ were fairly easy to compare. Historically, members of the healthcare community had applied similar sets of accounting rules without regard to their business structure. This meant that whether an organization was a for-profit, nonprofit, or a government owned, every healthcare entity was considered to be in the same industry and the accounting procedures they were forced to follow were similar, thus increasing the level of comparability between organizations. However, today’s standard setting environment requires these similar organizations to apply different sets of accounting standards based of their business model. Resulting in similar transactions being accounted for differently and reducing the level of comparability between financial statements. This has led to the need and implementations of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, are a framework of accounting standards, rules and procedures defined by the professional accounting industry, which have been adopted by nearly all publicly traded companies in the United States, and allow for the recording and reporting of financial information in a uniform manner (Investing Answers, 2015). The benefit to companies using GAAP is that it makes it easier to compare the financial statements of different companies. GAAP aids in health care to establish the...
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...Horizons Vol. 26, No. 1 2012 pp. 125–133 American Accounting Association DOI: 10.2308/acch-50087 COMMENTARY Some Conceptual Tensions in Financial Reporting American Accounting Association’s Financial Accounting Standards Committee (FASC) Yuri Biondi, Jonathan Glover, Karim Jamal (Chair and principal co-author), James A. Ohlson, Stephen H. Penman, Shyam Sunder (invited principal co-author), and Eiko Tsujiyama SYNOPSIS: We examine four key conceptual tensions that are at the heart of many financial reporting dilemmas: stocks versus flows, ex ante versus ex post, conventions versus economic substance, and top-down design versus bottom-up evolution as sources of accounting practice. Associated with each of these conceptual dimensions is an accounting duality; in some cases, one side (e.g., stocks) is easier to measure in a reliable manner, while the other side (e.g., flows) is easier to measure in other instances. We suggest that financial reporting would benefit from a willingness to pay attention to, and find compromise between, both sides of these tensions; forcing a choice of one over the other does not serve to improve financial reporting. Keywords: conceptual tensions; stocks-flows; ex ante-ex post; conventions-economic features; design-evolution. JEL Classification: M40. INTRODUCTION I n the developing of financial reporting, accountants have had to repeatedly deal with some basic conceptual tensions that arise due to the very nature of accounting transactions...
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...How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis? Mary E. Barth Graduate School of Business Stanford University Stanford, CA, 94305 mbarth@stanford.edu. Wayne R. Landsman Kenan-Flagler Business School University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 wayne_landsman@unc.edu. May 2010 Forthcoming, European Accounting Review, 2010 We appreciate comments from seminar participants at the Bank of Spain, Rob Bloomfield, Elicia Cowins, Hilary Eastman, Gavin Francis, Christian Kusi-Yeboah, Jim Leisenring, Martien Lubberink, Richard Rendleman, David Tweedie, and an anonymous reviewer. We acknowledge funding from the Center for Finance and Accounting Research at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Global Business and the Economy. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1601519 How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis? Abstract We scrutinize the role financial reporting for fair values, asset securitizations, derivatives, and loan loss provisioning played in the Financial Crisis. Because banks were at the center of the Financial Crisis, we focus our discussion and analysis on the effects of financial reporting by banks. We conclude fair value accounting played little or no role in the Financial Crisis. However, transparency of information associated with asset securitizations and derivatives likely was insufficient for investors to assess...
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...equity. Financial accounting, on the other hand, is to prepare financial reports to external parties such as: investors, creditors, and governmental agencies. However, prior to reporting any information to external users, financial accounting must be completed according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles guidelines. Identify the hierarchy of sources for generally accepted accounting principles. Generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP for short, are the accounting rules used to prepare and standardize the reporting of financial statements, such as balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements, for publicly traded companies and many private companies in the United States (Paul, 2008). The main sources of GAAP are the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB), Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The SEC is a structure for setting accounting standards. The ACIPA created the Accounting Principle Board and serves as an organization to provide CPA services the best professional resources, guidance, and information. The FASB was renewed by the Accounting Principle Board (APB). ACB consists of Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC), and the major operating organization in this structure - the Financial Accounting...
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...The accounting profession in the 20th century developed around, at first, state requirements for financial statement audits, and then around Federal requirements created by securities acts passed in 1933 and 1934 (which created the Securities and Exchange Commission), according to a July 1999 article in The CPA Journal. In the 1970s, Congress and SEC demands for more reliable and comparable financial reporting led to the founding of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in 1973. The FASB and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) are now two of the main organizations responsible for establishing generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in the U.S. 21st Century – Accounting Regulation in Modern Commerce Beyond the industry's self-regulation, the government also sets accounting standards, through agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, passed after the Enron and WorldComm accounting scandals. The 21st century also saw the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act after the recession of 2008. The act contains 16 major areas of reform, including creation of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Volcker Rule that restricts banks from owning, investing, or sponsoring hedge funds, private equity funds, or any other type of proprietary trading operations that result in their own profit. Looking to the Future Accountants looking to the future have recognized that existing accounting...
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...Financial Reporting policies in healthcare are a commonly used set of standards that the company compiles by use of authoritative and accepted ways to record and report accounting. Corporate compliance is designed to prevent any violations of the law by those such as, agents, employees, of a business. The ethics are equally important these are a set of morals or moral principles set by a person or agency. Fraud can be described as a breach or deceit and abuse can be described as a misuse of authority. Now that I have explained a few commonly used words it should help you to have a better understanding of some of the topics raised in this paper. In healthcare financial management, there are four elements those are; planning, controlling, organizing, and decision making. Each element has its own underlying task which include, for planning there is to identify what must be done in order to make completion possible. In controlling, there are steps that should be followed to ensure there is a work and ethics practice followed. Organizing requires a detail oriented person to perfect the skills of hiring the right person for the right position, ensuring there is a schedule of employees work loads, knowledge of what resources are most profitable and what ones are least effective. In financial management reports are viewed and logs are tracked as to what information is provided by the other 3 elements can improve the success of the business. Generally accepted accounting principles...
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...How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis? Mary E. Barth & Wayne R. Landsman a a b Graduate School of Business , Stanford University , Stanford, CA, USA b Kenan–Flagler Business School , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill, NC, USA Published online: 07 Jul 2010. To cite this article: Mary E. Barth & Wayne R. Landsman (2010) How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis?, European Accounting Review, 19:3, 399-423, DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2010.498619 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2010.498619 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the...
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...huge role in the accounting industry. IFRS stands for International Financial Reporting Standards. IFRS defines the accounting standards that are developed and approved by an independent, not-for-profit organization called the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The IASB is a private sector that was established in the year of 2011 and currently has 16 members. While GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, is a combination of authoritative standards and simply the commonly accepted ways of recording and reporting accounting information. Both remain of high importance and hold differences as to why they are each valuable to the accounting process. STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL The format of a statement of financial or position under IFRS often differs from a balance sheet presented under Generally Accepted Accounting Principals. (Wiley, 2015, "The Accounting Information System") The reason being is that GAAP requires that the assets be listed in order depending of the measurement of liquidity. It is mandatory that GAAP's particular accounts be listed in a specific order depending on its hierarchy. The shareholders equity will be the last item recorded. In order to make things easier when recording future reports, cash must always be listed first. By listing the cash first, it will be considered the highest asset. On the other hand, IFRS does not give a specific order for the statement of financial position. Most companies today just report their assets in reverse...
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...healthcare organizations face an intimidating financial situation in today’s healthcare atmosphere. “Decreasing revenues, increasing costs, and high consumer expectations present a complex challenge for healthcare administrators and medical directors who must not only manage in today’s climate, but also position their organizations for tomorrow’s storms” (Gale Group, 2004, p. 2). This paper will summarize the four elements of financial management; summarize generally accepted accounting principles and general financial ethical standards; and provide examples from articles that reflect ethical standards of conduct and financial reporting practices. Four Financial Management Elements Planning, controlling, organizing and directing, and decision making are the four elements of financial management. The purpose of planning is for the financial manager to identify the objectives and identify the steps required to achieve those objectives. The purpose of controlling is for the financial manager to review and compare current reports against previous data to ensure the plans, set by the organization, are being followed properly and efficiently. The purpose of organizing and directing is for the financial manager to ensure effective resource use and provide daily supervision. Lastly, the purpose of decision making is for the financial manager to make informed choices through primary tasks of analysis and evaluation. These four elements of financial management are the key to leading a...
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...corporate reporting:A critical review of the arguments Robert Bushman, Wayne R. Landsman Accounting and Business ResearchVol. 40, Iss. 3, 2010 Introduction There were a series of scandals in the UK in the 90’s which resulted in the collapse of Barings Bank, due to this the Financial Services Authority changed the structure of financial regulation that consolidated regulation responsibilities. The aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 has drawn the financial accounting standard setting into the orbit of political processes focused on restructuring the regulation of the world’s financial markets. The crisis has ignited worldwide debate on issues of systemic risk and the role played by financial regulation in creating exacerbating the crisis. There have been proposals for how to regulate the financial markets and financial institutions should be changed to ease the potential for large scale financial meltdowns in the future. There are many aspects of the financial system under debate, including the alleged role played by financial accounting standards in deepening the trajectory of the crisis. The crisis has forced politicians, regulators and economists to scrutinise financial accounting standards and create pressure for change, which creates an opportune moment to consider how to organise the analysis of efficient regulatory choice. This paper lays out the basic arguments that have been put forth both for and against the regulation of corporate reporting...
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...Goodwill is an extremely interesting business phenomenon. It enables a firm to derive competitive advantage because of issues like reputation, stability, technical excellence, perceived quality and other intangibles, and thereby allows it to earn higher profits, than it would otherwise have, by selling its products or assets. While the need for valuation or accounting of goodwill does not arise in the normal course of a business or in its growth on a periodic basis, (because of the absence of physical assets to back it up), it becomes an extremely important aspect when a running business goes up for sale, or changes ownership, through mechanisms like mergers, or acquisitions. Goodwill can be considered from two different points of view: an economic and an accounting approach. The economic approach regards goodwill as the present value of the additional profits the acquiring company is expecting to gain in the future resulting from the acquisition. These additional profits arise from a “favourable attitude towards the firm” and from synergies. From an accounting perspective, goodwill is the difference in valuation between the purchase price and the book value of the acquired firm. (Lycklama, 2006) The dilemma faced by accountants in valuing goodwill is best illustrated by the sign Albert Einstein had in his Princeton office that stated, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Bullen and Cafini, 2006) Businesses with strong...
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