Новости

World Bank decreased its expectations for Russia’s economic growth for the third time in four months

According to the World Bank’s expectations, decrease of Russia’s GDP should accelerate this year to 2.9% by the end of 2015. This is a four times larger negative result than the previous forecast which was made only a month ago.

Russian law on “undesired” foreign companies may be approved today

Despite obvious controversy of the main idea behind it, the new law on “undesired” foreign business will not only be approved eventually – it will very likely be approved much sooner than it was planned earlier, which means almost today.

Offshore companies will be kept away from government purchases

A draft law was introduced for consideration to the State Duma of Russia. It was prepared by the government upon the president’s request as part of a more general “deoffshorization” initiative.

Russian auditors’ SROs planning a merger to stay on the market

Responding to much tighter quantitative requirements for membership in self-regulatory organizations of auditors, Russian associations of audit companies plan to merge. There are now five in total, but soon there will be only two. However, experts doubt that this will help because even united they will have to attract additional members to meet the new criteria.

MasterCard and Visa sign contractual agreements with the Russia’s National Payment System

The information agency TASS informed today that one of two largest global systems of electronic payments had signed a contractual agreement with the National Card Payment System at the very end of December. This is needed if an international payment system wants to continue operations in Russia. MasterCard has always openly declared its intentions to stay in Russia despite changed conditions because of particular importance of its banking market.

EU formally endorses IAS 19 and Annual Improvements to IFRSs (cycle 2010-2012)

It may be stated that the European Union formally endorsed «Defined Benefit Plans: Employee Contributions» and Annual Improvements to IFRSs (cycle 2010-2012).

PCAOB heard the critics

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) had to obey after the recent very apparent displease by results of its work of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We remind that the SEC’s governance criticized the Board’s agenda openly at the national accounting conference in Washington. So it was perfectly expected that the PCAOB would likely have to amend its plans for development of new auditing standards.

FASB eliminated “extraordinary items”

The Financial Accounting Standards Board of the USA made GAAP standards a bit closer to IFRS (namely, IAS 1 “Presentation of Financial Statements”) by eliminating the concept of “extraordinary items”. The international accounting standard prohibited their use in 2003 when a redrafted version of it was issued (effective since 2005).

Happy New Year!

Internal audit: last line of defense or something more?

In counties like Great Britain, Australia or South Africa internal audit has traditionally been seen as a safe line of defense against risks for many years. In the USA, this paradigm is also gaining population today.