The accounting statements of global financial institutions and the recent crisis

Brandon Davies, Gilad Livne and Alistair Milne, March 2010. The paper looks at major issues associated with accounting policies and standards which affected the banking sector in the run-up to the financial crisis. More particularly, it describes some of the unfortunate consequences of the interaction between financial reporting, capital requirements, risk management procedures, bank business models and remuneration. These include challenges associated with fair value accounting, pro-cyclicality, and comparability of, and precision in, numbers in financial reports. The paper concludes by identifying seven topics for future research and study.