IFRS News - February 2005 issue

It is tempting for companies contemplating the adoption of IFRS – formerly known as International Accounting Standards (IAS) – to view the change simply as an accounting exercise, something chief financial officers and their staff can do in their spare time. After all, as another company told us: ‘All we have to do is change the numbers.’ But this assumption is dangerous. IFRS conversion is a change in primary GAAP, which means that everyone in the organisation must learn a new
language, a new way of working.

The whole basis of reporting to the market will be different. For many
companies, this will mean fundamental changes – changes that can ripple right across their business operations from investor relations to everyday procedures, changes that can affect the viability of some products and even the reported profitability of the business itself.

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