International standards

Mental health is a global issue

Mental health issues have become as big a global issue as climate change, claims BP CEO Bernard Looney.

He recently told The Times newspaper that companies need to end the stigma that surrounds mental health and “make it OK for people to not feel OK”.

He felt the pandemic has made things worse. He has spent most of the last year or so working from home like many, and said “living on your own can be lonely”.

Looney stressed that everyone has had a challenging time and was concerned that there was still a high degree of shame surrounding mental health because “we are brought up in a world that’s more and more competitive”.

He explained: “Particularly in the past, in a male-dominated world, you have to be the best, you have to not show weaknesses. I think the opposite is true. Showing people you are a real person with real issues draws them closer to you.”

IASB puts forward reduced disclosure for subsidiaries

The International Accounting Standards Board has proposed a new IFRS Standard that would permit eligible subsidiaries to apply IFRS standards with a reduced set of disclosure requirements.

The proposals respond to feedback from stakeholders and are designed to ease financial reporting for eligible subsidiaries while meeting the needs of the users of their financial statements. The proposed standard would be available to subsidiaries without public accountability – companies that are not financial institutions or listed on a stock exchange – whose parent company prepares consolidated financial statements applying IFRS Standards.

These subsidiaries report to their parent company for consolidation purposes, applying IFRS Standards. Electing to apply the proposed Standard would enable them to also use IFRS Standards when preparing their own financial statements but with reduced disclosures.

The proposals would save subsidiaries time and money by:

Eliminating the need to maintain an additional set of accounting records for reporting purposes – if the subsidiary currently does not apply IFRS Standards in its own financial statements; and

Reducing the disclosures required to comply with IFRS Standards.

The IASB has tailored the disclosure requirements in the proposed Standard to meet the needs of financial statement users of subsidiaries without public accountability.

Access the Exposure Draft Subsidiaries without Public Accountability: Disclosures.

Get Back to Basics

Accountancy is simple if you know the basics. PQ magazine is building its Back to Basics video series with the help of award-winning lecturers. The series looks at assets, trial balance and debits and credits, to name a few.

This month we are adding business valuations to the list. Sunil Bhandari explains the basics behind business valuations (see page 27 in this issue for the feature and link to the video).

So, what videos do we already have for you: Assets, with Tom Clendon https://vimeo.com/545939340 Trail Balance, with Michele Baker https://vimeo.com/500074449 Financial Maths for AFM and FM students, with Sunil Bhandari https://vimeo.com/446780185 Strategic Planning Process, with Sean Purcell https://vimeo.com/437139421 Double Entry Bookkeeping, with Tom Clendon https://vimeo.com/429252329 Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), with Sunil Bhandari https://vimeo.com/536755049

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