국제회계기준 도입으로 인한 재무정보의 비교가능성 실태분석

In order to improve the international credibility of accounting transparency, Korean government mandated public firms adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards(IFRS) in 2011. After the disclosure of first quarter and mid-year financial statements of public companies, financial analysts, investors and other financial statement users have expressed difficulties on the comparability of financial statements data over time and across companies. In particular, various interested parties and news media have expressed that the comparability problems are resulted from unstandardized format of financial statements, inconsistent ways computing operating income across companies, and the adoption of different accounting assumptions and estimates across companies, etc. Accordingly, this study investigates detailed items that may have caused the comparability problem on financial statements utilizing 2011 mid-year financial statements of public companies. This study also provides some suggestions for financial statement users, external auditors, and regulatory bodies to mitigate or to improve the comparability of financial statements in IFRS environment. Specifically, this study examines the comparability based on following components under IFRS: (1) format related – inclusion and definition of operating income, ways to disclose expenses by nature or by function, faithful representation of financial revenue, sales, costs of goods sold, selling and adminstration expenses, other income, gains or losses, financial assets/liabilities, order of liquidity presentation in the statement of financial position, details of equity items, classification of interest income/expenses. (2) principle based standards related - contents of consolidated financial statements, the extents of equity method, tangible and intangible assets revaluation, inventory valuation, depreciation methods and assumptions. (3) others - unnecessary disclosures, sufficiency of footnotes disclosure, and retirement benefits. This study finds that ways to compute operating income and methods of disclosing the income vary across companies. In particular, the extent/definition of operating income and its components such as gains and losses on investment assets disposal and gains and loss on foreign currency translation or transactions varies across companies. From the perspective of faithful representation, our investigation reveals that more detailed information on other operating income, sales revenue and the costs of goods sold are essential to improve the comparability. From the perspective of the nature of principle based accounting standards, our analysis indicates that about 25 percent of the sample firms include affiliated firms with less than 50 percent ownership as subsidiaries in their consolidated financial statements. Not many companies adopted assets revaluation for tangible/intangible and investment assets. We also find depreciation methods vary across companies under IFRS. It seems that Korean Financial Supervisory Services, Korea Listed Companies Association and other related organizations have made a proper direction in dealing with various issues under IFRS. However, suggestions and requirements made by these organizations may not work properly unless companies are willing to comply with them. Based on the analyses, this study suggests that regulatory bodies such as Korean Financial Supervisory Services(FSS) conduct monitoring activities in standardizing the quality of audit services across external auditors. In doing so, benchmarking systems in countries with more developed capital markets would be helpful. From the company side, companies must closely communicate with other companies within the same industry and adopt as similar accounting principles as possible. Companies also provide full and sufficient information on accounting policies they adopted.