More aggressive pension funds?

nrpn has a good story about pension funds having to become more assertive in pursuing their fiduciary duty towards their members, even if that means joining class actions, which are so despised in Europe, against firms they're invested in. Often times, this is the most effective means to bring about changes in corporate governance.

ECB calls for Pensions Treaty

In an unprecedented move for an institution whose independence is so vital to its cause as it is in the case of a central bank, Mr Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank has called for legal constraints on democratic institutions to ensure the intergenerationally sustainable funding of pensions systems in Europe. The call comes with a succinct analysis of the poor performance of democratic institutions with regards to intertemporal distribution, using the examples of inflation, where the cure is independent central banks, and public debt, where it is the Maastricht Treaty. The objective of such a Pensions Treaty would be to "link in a quasi automatic way benefits and the retirement age to contributions and to the average life expectancy, so as to prevent one generation from being paid its pension by the next generation, with benefits that the latter generation could not itself hope to enjoy".

This important speech is another proof that the fictitious generation treaty has been introduced and broken at the same time by the present generation, and it proposes an interesting and perhaps workable solution, which will probably also require an independent Pensions Authority to supervise the implementation of the Pensions Treaty. It is however very courageous and uncharacteristic of the ECB to take on this contentious issue.

XBRL article in CFA Magazine

After this week's important SEC announcement, there is no more doubt as to whether XBRL is an established standard for financial reporting. Following our article in Professional Investor, the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity is voicing its official support for XBRL in an article in the latest edition of the CFA Magazine.

IFRS from an analyst's perspective

By popular request, here are the slides from my presentation (now complete with notes) about the Financial Analyst's perspective on Financial Reporting Standards which I gave this morning at the World Standard Setters' Meeting in London.

I've also made a recording of the introduction by Warren McGregor, my presentation and the subsequent Q&A session. Unfortunately the questions are not very easily understood, and the recording cuts off after an hour. But it works pretty well for being recorded on a simple mobile phone.

SEC to Rebuild Public Disclosure System

Wow! The US SEC is rebuilding its public disclosure system entirely based on XBRL, thus "paving the way for universal XBRL filings by companies". This in effect is just short of announcing that once the three announced contracts have been completed, the SEC will introduce mandatory disclosure based via XBRL. More about this on CFO.com.