XBRL for Investment Professionals

It's nearly a month that said conference took place in London, and I have yet to blog about it ... some of the reasons for that delay probably co?ncide with the reasons why a relatively small group of less than fifty professionals came together for an event that has been organised by CFA Institute, EFFAS and the IASCF, namely current market dislocations. In the face of that, an infrastructure undertaking such as XBRL takes second place with many.

Nevertheless, participants tended to be quite happy with the conference and commented favourably on the quality of the audience as well. The relatively small size of the audience made it possible for the audience to interact with each other and to participate actively in the Q&A session, which is very helpful when you're the moderator ...

Here are the presentation slides. It's a pity that David McGraw's slides are not available, because his and Homi Byramji's presentations struck a strong chord with me. In David's case it was the breadth of the potential applicability within a leading institutional investor's processes, and the challenges that XBRL has to respond to (data governance!), whereas Homi was demonstrating clearly that, other than Encyclopedia Britannica, Thomson Reuters is not going to be asleep on the wheel in the face of the challenge to the middle man posed by XBRL. Personally, I am fairly confident now that XBRL is a sustaining innovation for information intermediaries. 

Shortly before the conference, Finanz und Wirtschaft published an XBRL update that I wrote. And there is one more update: XBRL CH is now officially a provisional Jurisdiction!

XBRL for Investment Professionals

The CFA Institute, EFFAS and the IASC Foundation are hosting the first XBRL conference for Investment Professionals in London on 26 September 2008. Thanks to the recent rule proposals of the US SEC applicable to corporate filers and mutual funds, there should be a lot of interest in that topic. Registration is now open!

Finance 2.0

I've had the great pleasure and privilege of presenting the CFA Institute Comprehensive Business Reporting Modell as well as its position on XBRL to the 17th XBRL Conference in Eindhoven. Needless to say that this was also a great opportunity to share & discuss some thoughts about the future path of financial research with participants. 

The slides of my presentation are available here, but I'm already in the process of reworking them, taking on board new ideas from the peer discussions. My thinking goes along the lines that XBRL will be a disruptive force in finance eventually, but not in the immediate future as data intermediaries are well positioned to leverage their incumbent interfaces with the cheaper and faster fundamental information. For them, XBRL will be sustaining - for a while. That also means that most professional investors - at least those on the sell side - will not care much about XBRL since they are receiving the goods indirectly via improved third party providers. Disruption will come to them by other means, however ... I am looking forward to this conference in the fall, which should firmly establish the debate among investment professionals.

Pensions webcast

In yet another effort to increase its accessibility, the IASB makes its first ever recorded webcast about its recent pensions DP available to the public on its pensions project site. The webcast had about 120 participants and the included Q&A session was rather good.

I think that the IASB ought to add public webcasts to its ongoing projects due process. The ease of (global) participation and dialogue would enhance the reach of the IASB's due process to a new group of users (of financial statements) which was hitherto unreachable due to lack of time and attention.

IZS conference documentation

IZS has made available the presentation slides from its recent annual conference about cross-border retirement provision from a Swiss perspective. It's a pity that the most interesting presentation seems to be missing: Klaus Stiefermann of a.b.a. talked about the Pensions Directive: godsend or letdown? As he was speaking from a distinctly German perspective, it will not come as much of a surprise that he tended towards the latter.

European pensions in Korea?

CFA Korea Society has been so kind to invite me to talk to them about pan-European pensions and the conclusions to be drawn from European experience in the light of the very recent introduction of occupational pensions in Korea. Here are the slides of that presentation.

Conference presentation

A few days ago, I've had the honour to address the first IASCF conference in Asia in Singapore with a presentation about the CFA Institute's Comprehensive Business Reporting Modell in its final version.

Education & Innovation

On the occasion of the Swiss CFA Society's celebration of the CFA Institute's 60th anniversary, I've been asked to host a panel discussing Education & Innovation in Switzerland. The panel was composed of Prof. Manuel Ammann, Prof. Thorsten Hens and Patrick Odier (right to left). The debate covered topics such as Swiss pragmatism in adopting innovation invented elsewhere, the rôle of intellectual property in financial innovation as well as ways to bridge the gap between academic research and practice. Panelists would like to see increased flexibility in the educational landscape and more interaction between the two quite separate fields.

Pensions in Russia

On Tuesday this week, I had the pleasure to give a presentation on occupational pensions to the members of CFA Russia in Moscow. The presentation has been recorded and will be made available on their soon to go live website. Meanwhile, the slides are available here.

Transparency in Greece

It was very interesting to contribute to the Greek Capital Market Commission's conference on the interaction between regulatory authorities and supervised entities and market competitiveness in Athens yesterday. Here are the slides of the short presentation, and this is an audio recording of it.

Seminar documentation available

The complete documentation (slides & materials) of the recent IZS seminar on European pensions from a Swiss perspective is now available online.

Stability or transparency?

Here is the text of a short presentation I gave this morning on the occasion of the General Assembly of the European Federation of Accountants in Brussels. The general consensus emerged that there is no direct connection between financial reporting at the micro (firm) level and macroeconomic stability. This differentiation is crucial in the debate.

The subsequent Panel on the Internet - An opportunity to empower investors through accessibility or a risk for the reliability of financial information? with the US SEC's CIO Corey Booth among others made me doubt whether the European profession is really aware of the drastic impact that XBRL as a disruptive technology is going to have on the financial reporting value chain.

P.S. Other conference documents are available at the FEE's website.

Asset management under the Directive [CH]

Here are the slides of my presentation held today at the IZS seminar on Pan-European Pensions from a Swiss perspective. The main focus of that presentation was on the prudent person rule, which is a new concept in the Swiss market. Co-sponsoring (together with Winterthur) Bank Sarasin's auditorium in Basle was fully packed, and I have a feeling that this was a rather important event for the Swiss market place with most participants' awareness of the challenge raised.

A user's view on XBRL & assurance

Please find attached the slides from a short presentation I gave at the World Congress of Accountants in Istanbul this morning.

IFRS from an analyst's perspective

By popular request, here are the slides from my presentation (now complete with notes) about the Financial Analyst's perspective on Financial Reporting Standards which I gave this morning at the World Standard Setters' Meeting in London.

I've also made a recording of the introduction by Warren McGregor, my presentation and the subsequent Q&A session. Unfortunately the questions are not very easily understood, and the recording cuts off after an hour. But it works pretty well for being recorded on a simple mobile phone.

Presentation slides

By popular request, here are the slides from my presentation with the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce today.

Convergence conference materials

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that my contribution to the IASCF's Frankfurt conference was available online. The IASB has now published all conference materials on their own website.

Coming of age of pan-European Pensions

Being on the CFA Institute Retainer Speaker Programme, I was invited to give a presentation to CFA Romania, following the Head of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. It was a pleasure to comply with that request of course, especially since the event was combined with the CFA Award ceremony. After Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Madrid and Sofia, this was already the sixth opportunity for me to advance my topic of preference. The presentation is available online.

IFRS convergence & consistency

The documents and transcripts of the FEE Seminar on IFRS Convergence & Consistency are finally available. The seminar took place on 1 December 2005 in Brussels and I was asked to represent the views of financial analysts.