Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

I’ve got a research question I’m hoping someone can help with. I’m looking for prior research where a single agent reports to multiple principals. For example, a single employee reports to his direct boss and to his product manager or a CFO reports to the Board and to the CEO, etc. How does the multiple principal/multiple [...] Read more > >

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an interview with William Isaac where he calls some of the FASB board members “Religious Zealots.” Since then I’ve been pointed to a rebuttal article I enjoyed reading (these fair value arguments can be so much fun). To prove his point (and ours, unwittingly), he made this prodigious [...] Read more > >

You can look at the 113 page opinion (pdf), or just accept the New York Times’ summary: The court turned aside a broad challenge to one part of the law, which established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to regulate the accounting industry. Some commentators had forecast that the court might throw out the entire law [...] Read more > >

The FASB and IASB released their exposure draft of their proposed revenue recognition standards. From paragraphs IN8 and IN9 of the official document In summary, the core principle [of revenue recognition] would require an entity to recognize revenue to depict the transfer of goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration that [...] Read more > >

Read my post from a few days ago on convertible debt. This topic of hybrids has long seemed like low-hanging fruit to me especially for experimentalists who can create conditions that don’t exist in the real world (which is probably what you would need to do for this topic). Any experimentalists out there who understand [...] Read more > >

FROM FORD MOTOR CO.’s 2009 financials. Convertible Debt Instruments. We adopted the FASB’s new standard on accounting for convertible debt instruments that may be settled in cash upon conversion (including partial cash settlement) on January 1, 2009. The standard specifies that issuers of convertible debt securities that, upon conversion, may be settled in cash [...] Read more > >

This afternoon (1-2:30pm ET) there will be a webcast titled “Private Company Financial Reporting: Time for a new approach?” sponsored by GT and FEI. It sounds like it will be pretty good. You can get more information on it here. Read more > >

I saw today that the “National MAP Survey” is underway. I had never heard of it before, so I thought I would investigate. MAP stands for “Management of an Accounting Practice.” Basically, it is a survey of accounting practices throughout the country, sponsored by the Private Company Practice Section (PCPS) of  the AICPA and the Texas [...] Read more > >

Greg Waymire wrote this obituary for John Dickhaut, which will be forthcoming in Accounting Education News. Please feel free to share your thoughts or reminiscences in the comments. –RJB John Dickhaut passed away April 10, 2010 at his California home following a long and courageous battle with cancer. John was a widely respected member of the [...] Read more > >

As most FASRI followers are aware, the IASB and FASB are revising their Conceptual Frameworks.  The new and old frameworks posit that relevance of information for making decisions is a key attribute for determining if a particular number should be included in financial reports. I recently attended a presentation of a research paper by [...] Read more > >

We had a financial reporting course coordination meeting today here at UT Austin. We have a concepts course followed by intermediate in all one semester course. We were lamenting on the lack of fair value class / case materials. I have 2 cases that Katherine Schipper wrote for a FASB conference. [...] Read more > >

BANKERS GET OFF EASY… Read more > >

Were you shocked by the title of this post? It comes from a quote by William Isaac, former FDIC chairman. The quote was posted on a recent accountingWEB article that contains the results of an exclusive interview they had with Isaac regarding the FASB proposal to require loans to be carried at fair value. I don’t [...] Read more > >

I couldn’t resist. The title comes from the first line of today’s David Brook’s column in the New York Times. Read more > >

I was busy trying to update my class for the fall here. It seems discontinued operations turn a turn backwards, is that right? Anybody else following this one? Last year, they were trying to make the “thing” (to get technical) that qualifies for discontinued operations treatment be larger than in the past [...] Read more > >

A recent Accountingweb article talks about how accounting treatment can affect stock prices in a big way. Recently Apple overtook Microsoft as having the largest market cap for a technology company. According to the article, some of this may be due to accounting treatment: Supplementary notes to Apple’s results and filings with the Securities and [...] Read more > >

**See bottom of post for a June 25 update.** After suffering through a 5-hour delay in Newark on Friday, it appears that I was not the only one about to be subjected to delay. Many of you have probably been wondering how the FASB and IASB were going to accomplish the monumental task of finishing all of [...] Read more > >