分部报告财务信息美国会计协会关于国际会计准则委员会原则草案声明的一个评论外文翻译.docx

1、分部报告财务信息美国会计协会关于国际会计准则委员会原则草案声明的一个评论外文翻译外文文献翻译原文：Reporting Financial Information by Segment: A Comment of the American Accounting Association on the IASC Draft Statement of PrinciplesThe External Relations Committee of the International Accounting Section, American Accounting Association (AAA) is ch

2、arged with maintaining relationships between the AAA International Section and various external professional, academic and standard setting bodies. The committee is comprised of practitioners and academics from the U.S. and other countries. As part of its activities, the External Relations Committee

3、 is charged with responding to requests for comment from the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC). Where appropriate the views of the committee are reviewed by the President of the AAA and his designated reviewers and become the official view of the AAA.As part of its responsibilities

4、, the committee prepared a response to the IASC call for comments on its Draft Statement of Principles on Reporting Financial Information by Segment. The committees chairman also provided verbal testimony at IASC hearings on the Draft Statement. The following are IASCs proposals (in italics) togethe

5、r with the content of the written response to the IASC on behalf of the AAA.Key IssuesThe draft specifically asks commentators to indicate:1、Whether they agree that there is a need to revise the existing rules codified as IAS 14; 2、Whether they support the objective, principles and guidance in this

6、Draft Statement of Principles and, if not, what changes they would like and the reasons for those changes; 3、Any additional principles and guidance which they consider necessary, together with reasons. The Need to Revise IAS 14This involves two questions (1) whether there is any evidence of a need f

7、or segment reporting; and (2) whether the current standard needs revision. For both questions, the answer would appear to be different for line of business (LOB) and geographic segmental data.In the case of LOB, as Pacter (1994) indicates, over 80 academic studies have evaluated the data. Those stud

8、ies generally found that LOB disclosures significantly improve predictive ability, are used by investors (as indicated by market reaction studies-see Mohr (1983) for a summary), reduce bid-ask spreads, (Greenstein and Sami 1994), and may reduce the markets assessment of risk (beta) of reporting firm

9、s (Collins and Simonds 1979; Adjinkya 1980). This evidence supports the need for LOB reporting and indicates present reporting practices are at least somewhat effective.In the case of geographic segments, the results are much less clear. In almost all cases, the authors note that poor geographic bre

10、akdown limits the ability to effectively evaluate the potential efficacy of this data. Nevertheless, some of the extant literature finds that disclosure of geographic data may cause a shift in risk (beta) (Prodhan and Harris 1989) or that it offers a better forecasting tool than consolidated data in

11、 certain circumstances (Roberts 1989; Balakrishnan et al. 1990). However, a recently published paper in this area (Boatsman et al. 1993) casts doubt on the value of recurring geographic segment disclosure. Using U.S. data from a five-year period (1985-1989), Boatsman et al. (1993) find that, after a

12、djusting for outliers, there is little recurring information content to geographic segment data in its present (coarse) form. Further, our practitioner members from Europe noted that geographic segment data are seldom used. This confirms academic evidence by Rennie and Emmanuel (1992) that UK geogra

13、phic segment data are reported less often than ten years ago and the formats are less informative. Geographic segment reporting thus appears to be in need of a major overhaul if it is to have significant information value.Objective, Principles and Guidance in the Draft Statement of Principles Line o

14、f Business Segments:The IASC favored a business segments approach over the FASBs management approach. Both parties positions were summarized in the Draft Statement as follows:IASC: A business segment is a distinguishable component of an enterprise that is engaged in providing a product or service, o

15、r a group of related products or services, that generates significant revenue from external customers, and that is subject to risks and rewards that are different from those of other business segments. For this purpose, a business segment generates significant revenue from external customers if:a) a

16、 majority of the segments revenue is derived from sales to external customers; orb) the segments revenue from sales to external customers is 10 percent or more of total enterprise revenue. (Principle 5)FASB:. The management approach focuses on reporting financial information about the major operatin

17、g units of an enterprise, or operating segments. Under that approach, the segments to be reported are based on organisational units for which financial results are already maintained and analysed by management for purposes of conducting the enterprises business activities . . . . To be classified as

18、 an operating segment, an organisational unit must be an operating segment, an organisational unit must earn revenues and incur expenses and its manager must be directly accountable for its financial performance to the individual with principal responsibility for the enterprises operating activities

19、 (usually the chief operating officer or the chief executive officer). (Draft Statement, paragraph 36)The committee generally favors the business segment approach of the Steering Committee because it allows financial analysts to use their industry expertise. We support the risk and reward criterion

20、for determining business segments and believe it provides firms with sufficient flexibility to keep reporting costs at an acceptable level. Only firms reporting by strict organizational units would incur significant costs. Importantly, the Steering Committee does not endorse the use of standardized

21、product classification systems for determining segments. Analysts acknowledge the inherent conflict between the two approaches to segmentation and generally indicate a willingness to accept less comparability for greater relevance and reliability. In the AIMR 1993 position paper that was cited earli

22、er in this chapter, AIMR states:In an ideal world, an enterprise would report desegregated data in a format that coincides with and reflects how it is organized and managed. It also would disclose the source and nature of risks that are expected to affect, either positively or negatively, the amount

23、s and timing of its future cash flows. These risks may be associated with geography, product lines, markets, or a variety of other classifications. The enterprise would reveal the boundaries between its assorted legal-entity constituents, thus divulging restrictions on the claims of creditors and th

24、e movements of cash within the entity. Finally, all the desegregated data disclosed would mirror the way the business is organized and managed, while at the same time providing comparability to the desegregated data of other enterprises.In the real world, of course, not all of these objectives can b

25、e achieved. They require trade-offs and choices. From the standpoint of financial analysis, we believe priority should be given to the production and dissemination of financial data that reflects and reports sensibly the operations of specific enterprises. If we could obtain reports showing the deta

26、ils of how an individual business firm is organized and managed, we would assume more responsibility for making meaningful comparisons of those data to the unlike data of other firms that conduct their business differently. We realize the extraordinary difficulty of mandating a disclosure standard w

27、hile maintaining the flexibility of each enterprise to present its own circumstances and organization, but we believe it to be a commendable undertaking (boldface italics added).The highlighted sentence indicates that analysts in the U.S. have added an important codicil to their support for the mana

28、gement approach: namely, they want to be provided with additional details of individual firms operations. The analysts want enough information to recast each firm into a somewhat standard mold. The end result would seem to be a form of business segment data. Analysts role as information intermediari

29、es would be further enhanced by developing this data. Investors who do not receive additional direct information from management would be placed at a distinct information disadvantage.The committee questions whether this approach is well suited to facilitate the international transfer of capital. No

30、n-national analysts would be at a distinct disadvantage in obtaining information from management. We can envision these disclosures providing a hindrance rather than a help to global capital integration.Specific PrinciplesThe committee was in general support of the IASC Steering Committees proposals

31、 regarding line of business segment disclosures.Principle 3When both parent and consolidated financial statements are presented in a single financial report, segment information need be presented only on the basis of consolidated financial statements.There was some discord on Principle 3. One commit

32、tee member pointed out that in certain countries, consolidated or group accounts were not necessarily audited and that some fall back provision should be made to ensure that, in all countries, at least one set of segmental data had the benefit of an auditors stamp of approval.Principle 6A business s

33、egment should be identified as a reportable segment if:a) its revenue from sales to external customers and from transactions with other segments is 10 percent or more of the total external revenue of all business segments; orb) its segment result, whether profit or loss, is 10 percent or more of the combined