Investors call on EC to drop more changes to fair value reporting

A senior group of investors and analysts has written an open letter to the European Commission insisting that there be no further carve-outs to the controversial accounting IAS39 during a meeting to be held in Brussels today.

The letter, published in the FT today, says: ‘Now especially, investors need comparability and transparency, not further uncertainty and inconsistency.’

Signed, among others, by Nick Anderson, head of research at Insight Investment and Peter Elwin, head of accounting and valuation research at Cazenove, the names on the letter are all from the Corporate Reporting Users Forum (CRUF), a pan European grouping of investment analysts.

The Commission has already endorsed changed made to international standards that bring them into line with US GAAP. But the agenda at today’s meeting tabled much broader changes that would allow all classes of financials instrument to be reclassified and therefore duck the application of fair value accounting.

The FT letter says that CRUF believes ‘that further changes, which go beyond aligning IFRS with US GAAP, risk severely undermining the confidence users have in the accounts produced by European companies.’

Yesterday, the Investment Management Association released a statement saying the proposed changes could threaten transparency and comparability.

Last week JP Morgan released a paper signalling its disappointment with IASB changes but also stating its objection to further reform of the standards.