Action Alert No. 08-26
June 26, 2008

NOTICE OF MEETINGS

OPEN BOARD MEETING
(Board meetings are available by audio webcast and telephone.)

No Board meetings are planned for the weeks of June 30, 2008, and July 7, 2008. The next scheduled Board meeting is Wednesday, July 16, 2008.

OPEN EDUCATION SESSION

Wednesday, July 2, 2008, 9:00 a.m.

The Board will hold an educational, non-decision-making session to discuss topics that are anticipated to be discussed at a future Board meeting. Those topics will be posted to the FASB calendar four days prior to the education session.

BOARD ACTIONS

The Board Actions are provided for the information and convenience of constituents who want to follow the Board’s deliberations. All of the conclusions reported are tentative and may be changed at future Board meetings. Decisions are included in an Exposure Draft for formal comment only after a formal written ballot. Decisions in an Exposure Draft may be (and often are) changed in redeliberations based on information provided to the Board in comment letters, at public roundtable discussions, and through other communication channels. Decisions become final only after a formal written ballot to issue a final Statement, Interpretation, FSP, or Statement 133 Implementation Issue.

June 18, 2008 Board Meeting

Earnings per share. The Board decided not to provide a specific effective date in the revised Exposure Draft on earnings per share. Rather, the Board will determine the effective date after it completes redeliberations of the revised Exposure Draft. The Board did decide, however, that the revised Exposure Draft should indicate that a final Statement would be effective as of the beginning of a fiscal year.

Financial statement presentation. The Board confirmed the decision made at the April joint meeting with the IASB that this project should not seek to change existing standards relating to what items are recognized outside of profit or loss, thereby retaining existing guidance on presentation of other comprehensive income items in a statement of comprehensive income and on the recycling mechanism. Based on that change in the project’s scope, the Board decided that the Preliminary Views would express its view that:

  1. An entity should present a standalone statement of comprehensive income with other comprehensive income items presented in a separate section. The Board clarified that within that other comprehensive income section an entity should indicate (parenthetically or otherwise) the category (operating, investing, or financing) to which each item of other comprehensive income relates.

  2. Income taxes should continue to be allocated among continuing operations, discontinued operations, items of other comprehensive income, and items charged or credited directly to equity using existing guidance on intraperiod tax allocation.

  3. An entity should present income tax assets, liabilities, and cash flows in a separate section in the statements of financial position and cash flows, respectively. The Board agreed to not include the income tax disclosures addressed in March 2008 (related to the reconciliation explaining the relationship of income tax expense and accounting profit) in this project as they will be addressed in the income tax project.

The Board decided that the project should not:

  1. Make any further changes to the statement of changes in equity

  2. Address disclosures related to capital management and to measurement uncertainty

  3. Propose changes to presentation of earnings per share (or any other metrics) and, thus, will not amend FASB Statement No. 128, Earnings Per Share.

The Board also decided that the Preliminary Views should not address:

  1. Offsetting or disclosures about the measurement bases of assets and liabilities as those issues will be addressed in the Exposure Draft stage of the project

  2. Possible additional segment disclosures; however, the Preliminary Views should ask for input on whether the Board should address segment disclosures beyond consequential amendments.

The Board made the following decisions; all but item (4) below modify its previously expressed views:

  1. The schedule reconciling the statement of cash flows to the statement of comprehensive income should not include equity transactions (therefore, it would not include the equity section of the statement of cash flows). Changes in assets and liabilities not attributable to remeasurements should be included in a single column and not further disaggregated.

  2. An entity should determine how much information is presented in the discontinued operations section by applying the disaggregation objective (that is, information should be disaggregated if the additional information will be useful to users of financial statements in assessing future cash flows).

  3. The Preliminary Views should not express a preference for allocating the effects of basket transactions to categories; rather, it should describe allocation and nonallocation alternatives and ask for input from constituents.

  4. An entity should display transaction gains and losses, including the components of any net gain or loss on remeasuring the financial statements of an entity into its functional currency, in the same section and category as the assets or liabilities that gave rise to those gains or losses.

The Board also discussed a number of issues raised in the drafting process and, among other things, clarified its views on the definition of the operating and investing categories and on the disaggregation of information by function and nature in the statement of comprehensive income.

The Board decided that the Preliminary Views should state that the Board has not considered whether its views on financial statement presentation would apply to nonpublic entities. The Board will consider that issue in the Exposure Draft stage of the project.

The Board authorized the staff to proceed to a draft of a Preliminary Views for vote by written ballot, with a six-month comment period. The Board expects to issue the Preliminary Views in September 2008. During the comment period, a number of companies will be field testing the Board’s Preliminary Views.

FUTURE OPEN MEETINGS

The following is a list of open meetings tentatively scheduled through August. Because schedules may change, please check the FASB calendar before finalizing your plans. Revisions to this list since the last issue of Action Alert are highlighted in bold.

Thursday, July 10, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, July 16, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, July 16, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, July 23, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, July 23, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, July 30, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, July 30, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, August 6, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, August 6, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, August 13, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, August 13, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, August 20, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, August 20, 2008—FASB Education Session
Wednesday, August 27, 2008—FASB Board Meeting
Wednesday, August 27, 2008—FASB Education Session