International forum aims for cohesion in corporate reporting

A new international forum is bringing together key players in corporate reporting to promote more coherence, consistency, and comparability between corporate reporting frameworks, standards, and related requirements.

The Corporate Reporting Dialogue was introduced Tuesday by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). Along with the IIRC, participants in the Corporate Reporting Dialogue will be:

• CDP, a not-for-profit international sustainable economy advocate.
• The Climate Disclosure Standards Board.
• FASB.
• The Global Reporting Initiative.
• The International Accounting Standards Board.
• The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board.
• The International Organization for Standardization.
• The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

Huguette Labelle, the chair of Transparency International and an IIRC council member, will chair the Corporate Reporting Dialogue. She said in a news release that the forum will promote cohesion and efficiency, rebalancing reporting in favor of the reader, and helping to reestablish the connection between a business and its principal stakeholders.

“The corporate reporting landscape is changing,” Labelle said. “For too long, reporting has been fragmented and disconnected from the strategic drivers of value. In an interconnected world, isolated change is insufficient to reflect the complexities of modern business and investment practice.”

The purpose of the Corporate Reporting Dialogue is to strengthen coordination and alignment between key organizations with integrated reporting as the umbrella, IIRC CEO Paul Druckman said in a news release. “The need for this is continuously articulated in my discussions with companies, investors, regulators, and other stakeholders around the world,” he said.

—Ken Tysiac (ktysiac@aicpa.org) is a JofA senior editor.