The message is clear

FINANCE 

Long-range risks with the potential to significantly impact financial statements, such as environmental, social and governance risks, should be considered now, warns the International Accounting Standards Board chair, Dr Andreas Barckow.

Published in Company Director. 

Dr Andreas Barckow, chair of the International Accounting, Standards Board (Graham Jessop)

As chair of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which serves more than 140 jurisdictions around the world, Dr Andreas Barckow spends much of his time listening to what’s on his stakeholders’ minds.

“I’m basically on tour 30 to 40 per cent of my time, engaging with public authorities, auditors, preparers, users, any type of stakeholder relevant for our work, explaining what we are doing and asking, am I hearing anything new I need to feed back?” says the London-based head of the global accounting standard setter.

And the messages he’s hearing from Australia? They’re no different to those he hears all over the planet.

“ESG and sustainability are high on everybody’s minds,” says Barckow, during a visit to Australia in June jointly hosted by the AICD and the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB).

“So too are concerns about changes in reporting and accounting requirements more broadly — and about the amount of change that particularly preparers see coming towards them.”

These are concerns he takes seriously, acknowledging how important it is for the IASB to “pick the right battles” or risk jurisdictional carve-outs, which, in turn, threaten its ultimate goal of supporting functioning global capital markets.

Read the story in Company Director magazine.