27 Jun 2014

Global forum to promote corporate reporting agreement

A major new global forum will bring together some of the main players in the corporate reporting sector to promote greater cohesion and consistency between different frameworks and jurisdictions.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) are among the participants in the Corporate Reporting Dialogue (CRD).

Introduced by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), it aims to respond to market calls for better alignment and reduced burden in corporate reporting.

Other organisations taking part include the CDP, Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB), International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).

IIRC chief executive officer Paul Druckman hopes the forum will act as a “catalyst for an evolution in corporate reporting”.

“The purpose of the CRD is to strengthen cooperation, coordination and alignment between key organisations with Integrated Reporting as the umbrella,” he explained. “The need for this is continuously articulated in my discussions with companies, investors, regulators and other stakeholders across the world.”

Chairing the forum is Mrs Huguette Labelle, the chair of Transparency International and member of the IIRC. Transparency is key tenet of the basis for integrating reporting, a concept that is gathering pace and becoming more central to business thinking since the inception of the IIRC a few months ago.

“For too long, reporting has been fragmented and disconnected from the strategic drivers of value. In an interconnected world, isolated change is insufficient to reflect the complexities of modern business and investment practice,” she says.

The CRD was officially launched at the International Corporate Governance Network Annual Conference in Amsterdam earlier in June.

It seems to be part of a global drive for greater consistency across the accountancy and corporate reporting world.

For example in February the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) proposed a comprehensive framework to bring consistency to management accounting practices.