Substantial changes are taking place in the European financial market. This is partly due to developments in the markets (including the financial crisis of recent years), and partly due to the changes in the regulatory agenda of the EU which involves review of several core directives and which also has resulted in two green papers on corporate governance and the report from the Reflection Group. The aim of this book is twofold. First, to describe and analyse some of the most important changes that have emerged in Europe in recent years, and second, analyse whether more regulatory changes are being called for.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, Otto Beisheim School of Management Vallendar, language: English, abstract: Starting in 2005, the portion of foreign shareholders in the Dax has risen from 45% to 58% in the last decade. In the same year, the regulation of the European Union from 2002 came into effect which required all listed firms in the European Union to report their consolidated accounts in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) from 2005 on instead of each countries’ generally accepted accounting standards (GAAP). This is just one example where the volume of investments increased concurrently with the adoption of IFRS. Therefore, the question arises if the mandatory adoption of IFRS in the EU in 2005 or in other cases significantly affected and continues to affect investment decisions among adopters or third parties. In order to better account for differences between different types of investors and investees, we differentiate between retail investors, institutional investors and corporate finance activities. Moreover, we focus on the consequence of IFRS adoption on equity investment decisions as most research appears to focus on the equity instead of the credit market. Additionally, Lourenco & Branco point out that most research which finds no significant effects of IFRS adoption on investment decisions appears to focus on voluntary adoption before 2005. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on mandatory IFRS adoption. In this context, research suggests that mandatory IFRS adopters experience significant capital markets benefits as well as enhanced foreign institutional ownership and enhanced M&A activity. Ultimately, we observe four overarching drivers behind the aforementioned observations that impact investment decisions across different types of investors and investees.

The broad consensus before the recent financial crisis was that the so called fair value accounting (FVA) improves transparency contrary to the historical cost model. Since 2008, the discussion has been on the root cause of the crisis, which lessons can be gleaned from it and how making the same mistakes again can be avoided. Basel III was implemented in order to improve the regulatory environment and was the response of regulators and politicians to public pressure and suspicions raised by the bail out programmes for banks. Consequently, an until then inconceivable number of new regulations and regulatory bodies were introduced. FVA was also blamed as part of the cause of the recent financial crisis. Available-for Sales (AfS) securities represent a major component of bank balance sheet asset. Gains and losses of AfS-positions are recorded within the Other Comprehensive Income (OCI). The OCI includes items which are not recognized (IAS 1.7) in income statements but increase or decrease a bank’s equity. The items also include income and expenses from Available-for-Sale positions (AfS) in accordance with IAS 39. On October 13th, 2008, an amendment to IAS 39 was published by IASB. This amendment did authorize the reclassification of assets. This amendment clearly demonstrates the influence of FVA on the value of assets of banks that apply IFRS. The main objective of this book is to verify the influence of OCI and whether the new regulations sufficiently capture this critical factor. Regulators should ensure that unrealized profits do not result in a capital drain. One way to assure this is to make OCI subject to a prudential filter and to deduct it from regulatory capital, which was the case until CRR became effective on January 1st, 2014 (CEBS guideline 2004). Basel III is even less strict than Basel II in that regard. Article 26(1) CRR clearly states that CET1 items must be recognized only in case they are really available to the financial institution for “unrestricted and immediate use to cover risks or losses as soon as these occur”. Nevertheless, with the introduction of the CRR, the prudential filter for positions that caused the financial crisis and led to poor capitalization of banks was not strengthened but actually removed. At present, CRR does not envisage any filter for unrealized gains parked in OCI.

Richard Wittsiepe analyses the relevant IFRS statements with a view to possibly integrating them into existing workflows in an annual audit. He weighs the key issues of conversion by comparing them with the 4th EU Directive for accounting within the EU. The aim is to visualise the workflows as the basis for creating support software which can make a key contribution to cost-effective conversion.

This study examines European stock market reactions to 16 events associated with the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Europe. European IFRS adoption represented a major milestone towards financial reporting convergence yet spurred controversy reaching the highest levels of government. We find an incrementally positive reaction for firms with lower quality pre-adoption information, which is more pronounced in banks, and with higher pre-adoption information asymmetry, consistent with investors expecting net information quality benefits from IFRS adoption. We find an incrementally negative reaction for firms domiciled in code law countries, consistent with investors' concerns over enforcement of IFRS in those countries. Finally, we find a positive reaction to IFRS adoption events for firms with high quality pre-adoption information, consistent with investors expecting net convergence benefits from IFRS adoption.

This book, dedicated to Prof. Jacques Richard, is about the economic, political, social and even environmental consequences of setting accounting standards, with emphasis on those that are alleged to be precipitated by the adoption and implementation of IFRS. The authors offer their reasoned critiques of the effectiveness of IFRS in promoting genuine global comparability of financial reporting. The editors of this collection have invited authors from 17 countries, so that a great variety of accounting, auditing and regulatory cultures, and educational perspectives, is amply on display in their essays.