An influential group of analysts have said that droppingheadline earnings figures from financial statements would be damaging toinvestors, reports Jennifer Hughes of the Financial Times.
According to Hughes, the International Accounting Standards Boardand its
In a letter to both the IASB and the FASB, members of theCorporate Reporting Users’ Forum, made up of senior research analysts from suchbanks and fun managers as Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers andFidelity, said they disagree with the proposals that there should not be anearnings sub-total within a performance statement, as they find the “earningssub-total particularly useful in enabling management to communicate with us ata highly aggregated level.”
“We’re trying to phrase the letter on the basis we recognizethey haven’t come to a decision yet,” Peter Elwin, head of accounting andvaluation research at Cazenove, told FT. “But we are concerned that there might already be a momentum in aparticular director.”