IASB improved conceptual framework for financial reporting Essay

IASB improved conceptual framework for financial reporting - Essay Example Legal entities of different types of ownership are obliged to comply with regulations in financial reporting, stated in the national accounting standards. But the current process of economic and business globalisation caused the necessity of a common set of standards that could be applied in many countries, providing the consistency and uniformity of accounting and financial reporting throughout the world.Thus, in 2001 the special International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has been established in the UK in order to design standards, intended to attain a global acceptance. If a company complies with the international accounting standard, it will likely achieve a faithful representation of its financial performance; as well as it will provide the basis for analysis of the company’s position on the global market and further prospects for development of its business. Such information is extremely useful for different stakeholders helping them to make better decisions concerni ng the company. The â€Å"decision-usefulness† approach in accounting has been known even from the 1930-40s. Currently it is laid at the heart of the Conceptual Framework of Financial Reporting, which is being developed by the IASB in collaboration with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). This essay is aimed to analyse critically the IASB’s Framework, in particular, regarding the objectives of financial reporting and qualitative characteristics of financial reporting information. ... at that time conceptual frameworks with a common standard, which was intended to be â€Å"sound, comprehensive, and internally consistent† (IASB, 2006. p.8). Boards were primarily motivated by two objectives – firstly, to provide convergence of existing frameworks, and, secondly, to secure an improvement of the decision-usefulness approach in financial reporting. The fundamental principles of the new conception were adopted from several previous documents. A monograph â€Å"A Statement of Basic Accounting Theory†, published in 1966 by the American Accounting Association, emphasised that information ensuing from a process of accounting is more important than the process itself; it defined an accounting as â€Å"†¦identifying, measuring, and communicating economic information to permit informed judgements and decisions by users of the information.† (Lewis & Pendrill, 2004, p. 3) Another important document, which has begun to refocus the accounting polic y from stewardship to providing information useful for various stakeholders, is the Trueblood Committee report â€Å"Objectives of Financial Statements† (1973). It formulated an objective of financial statements as: â€Å"to provide information useful to investors and creditors for predicting, comparing, and evaluating potential cash flows to them in terms of amount, timing, and related uncertainty† (Zeff, 1999, p. 100). In July 2006 the first concept of IASB Framework was published in the form of a Discussion Paper. It defines the objective of financial reporting as â€Å"†¦to provide information that is useful to present and potential investors and creditors and others in making investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions† (IASB, 2006, p.18, OB2). This objective could be achieved if provided information