Tentative Board Decisions

Tentative Board decisions are provided for those interested in following the Board’s deliberations. All of the reported decisions are tentative and may be changed at future Board meetings.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020 FASB Board Meeting

Reference rate reform—Topic 848 scope refinement. The Board discussed its ongoing monitoring of reference rate reform initiatives, including changes in the interest rate used for margining, discounting, or contract price alignment for derivative instruments as a result of reference rate reform. The Board decided to add a project to its technical agenda to refine the scope of Topic 848, Reference Rate Reform, to include derivative instruments subject to the discounting transition.
 
Transition
 
The Board decided that the proposed amendments should be effective immediately with retrospective application as of the date of application of the amendments in Accounting Standards Update No. 2020-04, Reference Rate Reform: Facilitation of the Effects of Reference Rate Reform on Financial Reporting.
 
Comment Period of the Proposed Accounting Standards Update
 
The Board decided to provide a 15-day comment period for the proposed Update due to the time-sensitive and narrow nature of the proposed guidance.
 
Next Steps
 
The Board directed the staff to draft a proposed Accounting Standards Update for vote by written ballot.


Segment reporting. The Board discussed alternative bases for developing a principles-based disclosure requirement that would potentially require public entities to disclose significant segment expense categories by reportable segment.

Of the alternatives, the Board decided to pursue a disclosure principle based on the significant segment expense categories that are:
  1. Regularly provided to the chief operating decision maker, and
  2. Included in the reported measure of segment profit or loss.
Next Steps

The Board directed the staff to prepare an analysis of alternatives on how public entities might determine the level for identifying the significant segment expense categories.