ESMA's Activity Report 2017: What You Need To Know

In April, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued its report on the Enforcement and Regulatory Activities of Accounting Enforcers 2017. Read on for highlights, results, and new priorities.

By the numbers

Of the 5,956 IFRS issuers in Europe, 142 are in Luxembourg, 528 in France, and 448 in Germany. The largest proportion by nation is the UK, with 1,315, though it will be interesting to see whether Brexit affects that.

ESMA's report looked at the interim and/or annual financial statements of 1,141 issuers, or around one fifth of the total. This is approximately the same figure as their last report, though more ex-ante examinations were done (136 in 2017 compared to 111 in 2016).

Enforcement actions were taken towards 328 issuers to address material departures from IFRS, a 6% increase over the prior year. The main issues related to financial statement presentation, impairment of non-financial assets, and accounting for financial instruments.

Findings

Among other things, compliance with the European Common Enforcement Priorities (ECEPs) was assessed in the report. The main results: ESMA took 76 enforcement actions against a total of 56 issuers related to the following:

presentation of financial statements (i.e. compliance with IAS 1) distinction between equity and financial liabilities transitional disclosures of the potential impact of IFRS 9 in the FS of non-financial institutions Besides the enforcement priorities for 2017 (details in this article), the report also has the results of a fact-finding exercise on IFRS 9 and 15 impact disclosures: only a few issuers disclosed the quantitative impact of the two new standards. In the report, ESMA added that disclosures should be entity-specific.

ESMA has also reviewed the Fair Value Measurement in IFRS statements in order to contribute to the International Accounting Standard Board's (IASB's) IFRS 13 project (more on that here).

Supervisory convergence

Another of ESMA's projects is to strengthen supervisory convergence by sharing best practices with/among European enforcers. To this end, it...