Plenary Lecture

Plenary Lecture

Globalization of Financial Reporting: Simplification or Administrative Burden for Companies


Professor Jiri Strouhal
University of Economics Prague
W. Churchill Square 4
130 67 Prague 3
CZECH REPUBLIC
E-mail: strouhal@vse.cz


Abstract: Adoption of IFRS (or IFRS for SMEs) as a national accounting system could be vital for true-and-fair view and for the higher comparability of accounting information in globalized world. The crucial necessity will be the wider spread of IFRS knowledge. Generally, IFRS are based on different concept than continental accounting regulation, so it’ll be not only about the training of new accounting regulation, but about the training of the different accounting thinking and different approach for posting of accounting transaction. There will be also necessary to provide regular information for professional accountants about the evolution and changes in IFRS and the long-life training.
The current possibilities of IFRS adoption in emerging CEE countries are well described:
Absence of description of detailed postings in IFRS brings higher demand on the professional and ethic level of accountants. If you take in account the very limited legislation requirements on the qualification of accountants, none requirements on the long-life education and ethic level and very difficult role of professional chambers trying to deal with this problem, it’ll be a long journey and lot of work for us...
Martin Unzeitig (President of Chamber of Certified Accountants Czech Republic)
According to the results of Strouhal et al. (2011) there could be stated that companies, which are not obliged to prepare financial statements according to IFRS, are not interested in IFRS. It is probably due to the fact that these companies concentrate mainly on the current state, the question of their future development (in unspecified future) is not so important for them. It is also due to disadvantageous proportion between the expenses invested and the revenues obtained.
On the other hand, having financial information that is universally understood and comparable to other companies’ information can improve relationships with customers, suppliers, investors and bankers. If these business partners have more confidence in the financial information being provided using IFRS, this can be a crucial factor in securing a new supplier, obtaining finance, reducing the cost of borrowing, and arriving at an acquisition or cooperation agreement.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Jiri Strouhal graduated from the University of Economics Prague (Faculty of Finance and Accounting) in 2003. He finished his doctoral studies at the Department of Financial Accounting and Auditing in 2005. In 2006 he became an accounting expect (Czech accounting profession certification scheme based on British ACCA curricula). In the period 2007 – 2009 he was member of the Committee for Education and Certification of Accountants Czech Republic and Executive Board member of the Chamber of Certified Accountants (Union of Accountants CR). From 2010 he is an acting Vice President of Chamber of Certified Accountants Czech Republic and member of Accreditation Committee of this professional organization.
He is reputed academician and practitioner; he published more than 300 research outputs, from which could be stated 15 monographers in the area of accounting and corporate finance, more than 25 research papers published in reputed databases (ISI, SCOPUS – important piece of them in WSEAS/NAUN research journals). His major is corporate financial reporting, partially focused on international accounting harmonization and financial securities reporting. He was a plenary speaker of DEEE 2010 IEEEAM conference in Tenerife and E-ACTIVITIES 2011 WSEAS conference in Jakarta, and organized sessions at WSEAS conferences in Timisoara (EMT 2010) and Iasi (AEBD 2011).

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