Résultat et performance financière en normes IFRS : quel est le contenu informatif du comprehensive income ?

In 2003, the IASB and the US FASB formed a Joint International Group (JIG) whose objective was to carry out a project originally untitled « Performance Reporting » establishing new international financial reporting standards for performance reporting. By envisaging the use of a comprehensive income (CI) item similar to the one reported under US GAAPs, the current debate surrounding this project is slowly deviating from its technical premises to the more fundamental issue related to accounting income usefulness. In this article, we investigate whether the focus on a CI item is legitimate regarding the IASB informational criteria. Using a dataset made of French and UK listed companies over the pre-(1993-2004) and post-(2005) IFRS compliance period, we examine the value-relevance and usefulness of three summary income measures (i.e. operating, net and comprehensive income) and bring evidence that (1) they are all associated with share return, (2) net income dominates CI at an aggregate level and (3) OCI provide incremental information beyond net income.