FRRP to investigate interim accounts

The Financial Reporting Review Panel has claimed responsibility for
investigating interim accounts filed under IFRS, despite noises from the City’s
watchdog suggesting that it will scrutinise the results under the new accounting
regime.

Reports have surfaced that the Financial Services Authority is to look
closely at interim reports now emerging for the first time under the new
standards, in response to growing concern that the nature of the standards, and
the exemptions offered to first-time adopters of IFRS, would make it difficult
to compare the performance of industry competitors.

However, the FRRP insists that such responsibility now falls to them,
following the signing of a memorandum of understanding in April.

‘I don’t know what [the FSA’s] process is, but we do have authority now to
keep under review certain listing requirements and that would include interim
reports,’ said Carol Page, director of panel operations at the FRRP. ‘If there
were something to do with the application of an IFRS standard in the interim
accounts now, we’re the body that would take that forward, so I’m sure they
would draw that to our attention.’

An FSA spokesman said it had neither the time or the resources to look at
every interim report, but if someone brought an issue to its attention that was
a cause for concern ‘then that is something we could look at in our role as the
listing authority’.
He added that their concerns would relate purely to presentational issues and
that the body was ‘not here to police accounting standards’.

The FSA has previously written to chief executives warning that IFRS
information that could impact on a company’s share price should be disclosed as
soon as it can be ‘quantified in a sufficiently reliable manner’.