CLIENT NEWSFLASH

SEC Confirms IFRS Filers Will Not be Required to Provide Interactive Data Until SEC Specifies Taxonomy

April 12, 2011

The U.S. SEC has issued a no-action letter confirming that non-U.S. issuers that file financial statements in IFRS as issued by the IASB will not be required to provide financial statements in interactive data format (often referred to as “XBRL”) until the SEC provides certain information needed for this purpose.

Under the original XBRL implementation schedule, non-U.S. issuers that file financial statements in IFRS as issued by the IASB would be required to provide XBRL financial statements for fiscal periods ending on or after June 15, 2011 (i.e., the 2011 Form 20-F for calendar year-end companies).   In order to prepare XBRL statements, issuers require a taxonomy, which is an electronic dictionary of business reporting elements used to report business data in XBRL.  The SEC has not yet specified the XBRL taxonomy for IFRS financial statements and has not provided any guidance as to when it will be specified, making it currently unfeasible to provide IFRS financial statements in XBRL.

The SEC’s no-action response does not address when it will specify the taxonomy or whether it will provide IFRS filers with an extension of the original deadline to process and implement the IFRS taxonomy once it is specified. However, we are hopeful that the staff will provide sufficient time for non-U.S. filers to comply after the taxonomy is specified.

Non-U.S. issuers that file financial statements in accordance with their home country GAAP other than IFRS as issued by the IASB are not subject to the XBRL requirement. The XBRL requirement for non-U.S. issuers that file U.S. GAAP financial statements was phased in over a two-year period with the last group of U.S. GAAP filers becoming subject to the XBRL requirement in their first fiscal year ending on or after June 15, 2010.

See the Davis Polk Newsflash, SEC Issues Rules Outlining Mandatory XBRL Requirement, for further discussion of the XBRL requirement as it relates to non-U.S. issuers.

 

 

If you have any questions regarding this newsflash, please contact any of the lawyers listed below or your regular Davis Polk contact.

Maurice Blanco212 450 4086maurice.blanco@davispolk.com
Julia K. Cowles650 752 2007julia.cowles@davispolk.com
Michael Kaplan212 450 4111michael.kaplan@davispolk.com
Nicholas A. Kronfeld212 450 4950nicholas.kronfeld@davispolk.com
Jeffrey M. Oakes +44 20 7418 1386 jeffrey.oakes@davispolk.com
Theodore A. Paradise +81 3 5561 4430 theodore.paradise@davispolk.com
Michael J. Willisch +34 91 768 9610 michael.willisch@davispolk.com
Janice Brunner212 450 4211janice.brunner@davispolk.com

 

Notice: This is a summary that we believe may be of interest to you for general information. It is not a full analysis of the matters presented and should not be relied upon as legal advice. If you would rather not receive these memoranda, please respond to this email and indicate that you would like to be removed from our distribution list. If you have any questions about the matters covered in this publication, the names and office locations of all of our partners appear on our website, davispolk.com.
© 2011 Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP