Newsletter July/August 2010: Basel concerned over loan loss accounting challenges

LONDON – Global banking regulators’ support for a new approach to accounting for bank loan losses is coupled with worries about the challenges that reforms, as proposed by the key international accounting body, pose for most banks. The Basel Committee of top banking supervisors has told the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the London-based body that sets the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) recognised in more than 100 countries, that it strongly supports reforms that would mean the earlier flagging up of loan problems in bank financial statements.