Call for reporting rules overhaul
Investors and accountants ask the ASB to modify company reporting rules
Fearing that vital information may be left out of company reports, investors and accountants have called on the Accounting Standards Board to have a rethink about new reporting rules.
Under new DTI rules, from 1 April, companies will be required to provide details of trends and risk factors affecting their businesses in the new operating and financial review to be presented alongside financial reports.
The ASB, in a move welcomed by investors, chose not to prescribe a template for the OFR. The UK society of Investment Professionals said this would cause ‘boilerplate reporting of the worst kind’, the Financial Times reports.
The investor group, however, added that the risk of the flexible approach could cause reporting that was bland, unclear and unbalanced.
Teaming up with investors, ACCA said the ASB needed to ensure that companies did more than simply meet the bare minimum standards, after government watered down its original OFR standards in the face of strong business lobbying.