An exploratory study of the exposure draft of IAS 19 due process

In July 2006, the IASB launched a comprehensive review of IAS 19, the main pronouncement relating to the accounting for defined pension obligations. As part of its systematic due process, the Board called for accounting practitioners to express their views on IAS 19. As such, the Discussion Paper (or DP) released in March 2008 generated 150 comment letters and the Exposure Draft (or ED) published in April 2010 produced 227 comment letters in response. Adopting a method of content analysis, this paper concentrates on the comment letters relating to the ED stage and seeks to pinpoint at issues which are of great concern to practitioners. This study has permitted to i) identify the most controversial questions for respondents, ii) highlight relationships between respondents' characteristics and comments, and iii) focus on issues and elements for further research. Because pensions are a sensitive issue, the results of this study could be of interest to the accounting profession and the public at large.