With the COVID-19 situation forcing widespread cancellation of research events of all kinds, including workshops, conferences and research seminars, we are pleased to announce that the EAA is launching a pan-European online research seminar that is open to participants from around the globe, with the ultimate aim of increasing the inclusiveness of accounting research and promoting new and innovative ideas. The EAA Virtual Accounting Research Seminar Series (VARS) will take place every Friday at 15.30…

Regulators in the US ruled against introducing mandatory firm rotations in addition to the existing rule for periodic partner rotations. In contrast, European regulators ruled in favour of a dual mandatory rotation rule in which both audit firm and audit partner rotations are required.   But who was right?    It is unclear ex-ante whether requiring two layers of rotation can generate any incremental net benefits over a single rotation rule. Dual rotation may increase…

Although the EAA-PhD Forum will not take place this year, the EAA and CAAA are committed to offer to three (3) EAA students the opportunity to attend the 2021 CAAA Annual Conference. The selected PhD students will receive a full waiver of the CAAA Conference fee. To apply for this opportunity please send a motivation letter by September 30th, 2020 to baha.diyarov@eiasm.be. Selected students will be informed by December 31th, 2020.

‘Impact investing’ is a wonderful concept that can really help to solve social issues. But we must go beyond simply believing others’ good intentions. We actually have to measure impact and make it a key focus of our efforts. Money plays a crucial role in society: investment drives the action. When the vast majority of capital is allocated to polluting – or primarily profit-driven – businesses, these companies continue to grow and flourish. If more…

It is no doubt that many if not all the Governments and citizens worldwide are facing dramatic times due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic. Everyone’s current focus is on ensuring that doctors and nurses can treat affected patients alongside with safeguarding public health through restrictive measures on people’s mobility, and the adoption of precautionary behaviours to minimise spreading of the virus. At the same time, there are visible signs that Governments are…

Since last week we have been teaching via Zoom. How did it work? Early March it became clear that our lecture halls will remain unpopulated for some time. My disappointment was huge since my colleagues and I were going to hold a pilot in block 5 in which we wanted to try out a 100-year-old educational model from Harvard Business School on our accounting students. My colleague didactics Annemarie Zand Scholten wrote to me, however,…

When teaching an online class to large group sizes it is sometimes not feasible to have students ask questions via their microphone, instead we often have to rely on them asking questions in the Zoom chat. However, the Zoom chat functionality is not particularly suitable for this purpose, it can be hard to read and keep organized. To solve this, I’ve created a small tool that helps to make taking questions via the Zoom chat…

This analysis was originally posted by Audit Analytics. On Tuesday, March 31, Quixant PLC – a UK-based gaming technology company – issued the following statement, claiming that KPMG LLP (UK) has decided to not sign any audit opinions or consents until April 5th: Quixant (AIM: QXT), a leading provider of innovative, highly engineered technology products principally for the global gaming and broadcast industries, today provides highlights of its unaudited financial results for the year ended 31 December 2019…

Banks and businesses have been calling for IFRS 9 Financial Instruments to be lifted. The forward-looking ‘Expected Credit Loss’ impairment model of IFRS 9 was introduced to reduce the likelihood that another financial crisis would stifle the banking system. IFRS 9 requires that financial assets such as loans are valued realistically by requiring financial institutions to make the provisions to cover loans to distressed borrowers before they start to default. Because no one can possibly tell under the current conditions whether borrowers will be able to service their loans, it is argued by some that…

Regulation, and especially a technical issue such as financial accounting, is often considered a matter for bureaucrats, not for politicians. In doing so, we tend to neglect that many accounting rules have real economic or social consequences. For example, accounting rules for stock option plans directly affect how companies compensate their management. Similarly, the accounting valuation of bank assets affects regulatory capital. Less restrictive requirements for loss recognition thus reduce the likelihood of bank bailouts.…