Title: Impact of IFRS transition on company financial reporting: the case of Italy and Germany

Authors: Michela Cordazzo

Addresses: School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Università 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study the impact on company financial reporting of IFRS mandatory transition in Italy and Germany. The study investigates the global and partial impact of each individual accounting adjustment that occurs on company financial reporting during IFRS transition. The analysis of such impacts is conducted in order to highlight how Italian and German companies have experimented IFRS adoption, and whether there are differences and similarities between Italian and German companies by moving to an international accounting regime. The results show that the global effect on equity is not significant for both Italian and German companies, while that on net income shows a stronger impact on Italian than on German ones. With regard to the individual accounting adjustments, the most significant partial impacts are those concerning employee benefits, provisions, and intangible assets for both Italian and German companies.

Keywords: IFRS transition; financial reporting; comparison; measurement; Germany; Italy; International Financial Reporting Standards; accounting adjustment; employee benefits; provisions; intangible assets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPM.2013.050519

International Journal of Business Performance Management, 2013 Vol.14 No.1, pp.1 - 18

Received: 22 Jul 2011
Accepted: 18 Jan 2012
Published online: 28 Nov 2013 *

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