ma questa bella novità la sapevate già? io no
Accounting change set to burden companies
By Adam Jones and Rachel Sanderson in London
Published: August 17 2010 20:37 | Last updated: August 17 2010 20:37
Retailers, airlines and ship operators can expect to assume billions of dollars more liabilities on their balance sheets as the result of a radical overhaul of lease accounting proposed by US and international standard setters.
The new rules have been drawn up in spite of fierce opposition from multinationals, which worry that the shake-up will make their corporate accounts more volatile and vastly increase their liabilities. Some companies fear they may breach bank loan covenants as a result.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
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In depth: IFRS - Apr-07
Under the rules, the liabilities of many companies would increase as they are forced to move rented assets such as aircraft, ships, shops and even photocopiers on to their balance sheets.
On average, the changes will increase a company’s reported debt load by 58 per cent, according to PwC and Erasmus University.
Senior accountants say few companies and investors are prepared for the volatility the new rules will bring to corporate reporting.
The rare joint proposals from the
International Accounting Standards Board and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board have also been criticised for failing to reduce complexity.
Veronica Poole, a senior partner at Deloitte, the accountancy firm, believes the financial impact of the proposed standard could go so far as to cause some companies to breach loan covenants.
“A lot of companies, particularly in the current turbulent times, are very much on the edge of their covenant compliance,” she said.
Lease accounting has been a source of contention for many years. Critics, who include IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie, say it has allowed some companies to understate their financial commitments as their leases are kept off balance sheet.
Current rules allow some leases to be classed as operating leases, in which the underlying asset and liability stay off the balance sheet. Others are logged as finance – or capital – leases, which do show up on the balance sheet.
Under the new proposal, the IASB and FASB said they were committed to abolishing the dual system as operating leases understated leverage.
Instead, they favour a unified approach in which lessees recorded an asset on their balance sheets based on their right to use the leased item. A liability reflecting future rental payments would also be posted.
When a discussion paper on the topic was issued last year, opponents included Iata, which represents airlines, and
Accor, the French hotelier,
Inditex, the owner of Spain’s Zara, and
Tesco, the UK retailer.
The proposed changes, which would apply to companies using IFRS and US GAAP, will be the subject of further consultation before the release of a final standard in 2011.
Wolfgang Laubach, a partner at consultancy firm KPMG, said that because of the “considerable accounting changes” for every entity with leases, an adequate transition time would be crucial once the standard is finalised.
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... è il 10-20% della popolazione + ricca USA che detiene tra l' 80 e l' 85% della ricchezza ... e se si parla di ricchezza puramente finanziaria addirittura il 93%...
