IAS39: Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement

In order to respond to the ASB, the ACT technical function established a working group comprising four members of its Technical Committee, two members of the Association together with support from PricewaterhouseCoopers to prepare a draft proposal.

The draft proposal was sent to over 3000 member and non-member institutions reporting under UK GAAP, IAS, Australian GAAP and/or SFAS. We received responses from over 50 institutions, however only 35 of these responses commented on the draft proposal ('the respondents').

There were three main reasons cited for non response to the draft proposal:

1. Institutions not currently reporting under IAS or FAS were given insufficient time to review IAS39
2. Institutions would not respond to proposals as they strongly disagree with the principles of IAS39 and, in most cases, FAS 133 and the increased use of fair value other than via disclosure in notes to financial statements
3. Institutions felt that it was not possible for one Standard to meet requirements for corporates and financial institutions