Fair Value Reclassifications of Financial Assets during the Financial Crisis

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to forgo the recognition of fair value losses and ultimately the regulatory costs of supervisory intervention. Analyses of stock market reactions suggest that a small subset of the most troubled banks benefit from such reclassifications. However, analyses of related footnote disclosures reveal that two-thirds of reclassifying banks do not fully comply with the accompanying IFRS 7 requirements. These banks experience a significant increase in bid-ask spreads in the long run.Bank Regulation, Fair Value Accounting, Financial Crisis, IAS 39, IFRS 7

Intended and unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption: A review of extant evidence and suggestions for future research

This paper discusses empirical evidence on the economic consequences of mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the European Union (EU) and provides suggestions on how future research can add to our understanding of these effects. Based on the explicitly stated objectives of the EU‟s so-called „IAS Regulation‟, we distinguish between intended and unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption. Empirical research on the intended consequences generally fails to document an increase in the comparability or transparency of financial statements. In contrast, there is rich and almost unanimous evidence of positive effects on capital markets and at the macroeconomic level. We argue that certain research design issues are likely to contribute to this apparent mismatch in findings and we suggest areas for future research to address it. The literature investigating unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption is still in its infancy. However, extant empirical evidence and insights from non-IFRS settings suggest that mandatory IFRS adoption has the potential to materially affect contractual outcomes. We conclude that both the intended and the unintended consequences deserve further scrutiny to assess the costs and benefits of mandatory IFRS adoption, which may help provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the IAS Regulation. We provide specific guidance for future research in this field.International accounting, IFRS adoption, economic consequences, contracting, regulation, review

Intended and unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption

This paper discusses empirical evidence on the economic consequences of mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the European Union (EU) and provides suggestions on how future research can add to our understanding of these effects. Based on the explicitly stated objectives of the EU‟s so-called „IAS Regulation‟, we distinguish between intended and unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption. Empirical research on the intended consequences generally fails to document an increase in the comparability or transparency of financial statements. In contrast, there is rich and almost unanimous evidence of positive effects on capital markets and at the macroeconomic level. We argue that certain research design issues are likely to contribute to this apparent mismatch in findings and we suggest areas for future research to address it. The literature investigating unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption is still in its infancy. However, extant empirical evidence and insights from non-IFRS settings suggest that mandatory IFRS adoption has the potential to materially affect contractual outcomes. We conclude that both the intended and the unintended consequences deserve further scrutiny to assess the costs and benefits of mandatory IFRS adoption, which may help provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the IAS Regulation. We provide specific guidance for future research in this field

Fair Value Reclassifications of Financial Assets during the Financial Crisis

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to forgo the recognition of fair value losses and ultimately the regulatory costs of supervisory intervention. Analyses of stock market reactions suggest that a small subset of the most troubled banks benefit from such reclassifications. However, analyses of related footnote disclosures reveal that two-thirds of reclassifying banks do not fully comply with the accompanying IFRS 7 requirements. These banks experience a significant increase in bid-ask spreads in the long run

Fair value reclassifications of financial assets during the financial crisis

This study examines whether reclassifications of financial assets out of fair value categories during a market downturn are associated with regulatory benefits and informational costs. We find that the severity of regulatory capital restrictions and the lack of prudential filters for unrealized fair value changes are positively associated with a bank’s reclassification choice. For a small group of banks that have a high reclassification likelihood and the greatest need for additional regulatory capital, we observe a positive stock market reaction around the announcement of the new accounting option. For another group of banks that were initially not expected to reclassify, we find that abnormal stock returns around the announcement of the accounting choice increase in the regulatory capital effect of the reclassification. Finally, we document a positive association between banks’ bid-ask spreads and the reclassification choice for those banks that do not provide complete IFRS 7 disclosures about the unrecognized fair value changes

Asset reclassifications and bank recapitalization during the financial crisis

Regulators frequently relax accounting rules during afinancial crisis as a meansof regulatory forbearance. The new accounting options provide banks with an opportunityfor an accrual-based increase in their regulatory capital. The use of such an accountingoption helps reduce the costs of government interventions such as bailouts and avoidthe dilution of existing shareholders’ownership rights. We examine the introduction of thereclassification option forfinancial assets during the 2008financial crisis and study the posi-tion of accrual-based options in the pecking order of banks’recapitalization measures. Thefindings suggest that the accrual-based increase in regulatory capital is temporary and doesnot provide permanent relief. Consistent with the long-term costs of accrual-based measures, investors perceive the accounting choice as a negative signal. If banks do not complement their use of the accounting option by other corrective actions that result in a real capitalincrease and a liquidity injection, they continue to suffer from low capitalization andfinancial difficulties in the following years. Ultimately, government interventions in accountingregulation are unlikely to offer a sustainable solution to capital shortfalls in the banking sector if they are not supported by the concurrent enforcement of real corrective actions