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Why Grant Thornton
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Grant Thornton’s culture is one of our most valuable assets and has steered us in the right direction for more than 100 years.
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Beyond global scale, we embrace what makes each market unique, local understanding on a global scale.
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Join our network
In a world that wants more options for high quality services, we differentiate in the market to grow sustainably in today’s rapidly changing environment.
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Grant Thornton International Ltd acts as the coordinating entity for member firms in the network with a focus on areas such as strategy, risk, quality monitoring and brand.
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Workable solutions to maximise your value and deliver sustainable recovery.
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We can support you throughout the transaction process – helping achieve the best possible outcome at the point of the transaction and in the longer term.
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At Grant Thornton, our IFRS advisers can help you navigate the complexity of financial reporting from IFRS 1 to IFRS 17 and IAS 1 to IAS 41.
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Our trusted teams can prepare corporate tax files and ruling requests, support you with deferrals, accounting procedures and legitimate tax benefits.
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Our teams have in-depth knowledge of the relationship between domestic and international tax laws.
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Through our global organisation of member firms, we support both companies and individuals, providing insightful solutions to minimise the tax burden for both parties.
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Indirect international tax
Using our finely tuned local knowledge, teams from our global organisation of member firms help you understand and comply with often complex and time-consuming regulations.
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Transfer pricing
The laws surrounding transfer pricing are becoming ever more complex, as tax affairs of multinational companies are facing scrutiny from media, regulators and the public
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Africa tax desk
A differentiating solution adapted to the context of your investments in Africa.
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Banking Holding banking to account: the real diversity and inclusion pictureWe explore how the banking sector can continue to attract, retain and nurture women to build a more diverse and inclusive future.
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Sustainability From voluntary to mandatory ESG: How banks can future-proof their operationsAs we move from voluntary ESG initiatives to mandatory legislation, we explore what the banking sector needs to prioritise.
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IFRS IFRS 9 - Audit of Expected Credit LossesGPPC releases The Auditor’s response to the risks of material misstatement posed by estimates of expected credit losses under IFRS 9
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growthiQ Steering your company to long-term successHistory has something important to tell us about the difficulties of steering a business to long-term success – through seismic shifts in technology, consumer demands and product development. With that in mind it’s unsurprising that over half the world’s largest companies in the early 1900s had shut their doors by the late 1990s. Some, however, have endured.
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International Financial Reporting Standards Implementation of IFRS 17 ‘Insurance Contracts’The auditor’s response to the risks of material misstatement arising from estimates made in applying IFRS 17 ‘Insurance Contracts’
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IFRS Get ready for IFRS 17After twenty years of development the IASB has published IFRS 17 ‘Insurance Contracts’, find out more.
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Global business pulse - industry analysis Mid-market recovery spreads to more industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - industry analysis A very uneven recovery across industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - Sector analysis Clear patterns of damage from COVID-19 across the industriesThe index results for 12 key sectors of the mid-market reveal just how much or little the various parts of the economy were impacted by COVID-19.
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Not for profit Mission: possible – putting impact at the heart of charityGlobal charitable continues to decline and charity leaders are increasingly looking at their own unique impact journey.
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Access to finance Raise finance to invest in changePrepare your business to raise finance to invest in change.
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Private equity firms Private equity in the mid-market: reshaping strategies for 2021When the global COVID-19 pandemic stormed across the globe in early 2020, the private equity sector was hit hard but deals are coming back to the market.
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Mid-market businesses Getting ready for private equity investmentOur specialists explore how private equity firms are now working with their portfolios and how the mid-market can benefit from investment.
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Mid-market businesses Myth-busting private equityNervous about partnering with Private Equity? We explore some of the common myths we come across when speaking to mid-market businesses about PE investment.
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Public sector Helping build the government of tomorrow, todayLearn about the Grant Thornton US public sector team.
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Global business pulse - industry analysis Mid-market recovery spreads to more industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - industry analysis A very uneven recovery across industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - Sector analysis Clear patterns of damage from COVID-19 across the industriesThe index results for 12 key sectors of the mid-market reveal just how much or little the various parts of the economy were impacted by COVID-19.
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Industries European Real Estate PodcastJessica Patel, Tax Partner at Grant Thornton UK speaks with tax partners and directors across the network to share their insights on the real estate market and some of the challenges.
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Industries European Real Estate PodcastJessica Patel, Tax Partner at Grant Thornton UK speaks with tax partners and directors across the network to share their insights on the real estate market and some of the challenges.
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Global business pulse - industry analysis Mid-market recovery spreads to more industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - industry analysis A very uneven recovery across industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - industry analysis Mid-market recovery spreads to more industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Global business pulse - industry analysis A very uneven recovery across industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Retail How retail is positioning for successCOVID-19 provided some hard lessons for the retail industry. It is time to turn those into sustainable and well executed growth strategies in 2021.
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Telecoms Can tech and telecom leverage economic headwindsAs most businesses brace for an economic downturn, tech and telecom could see new prospects. But, to turn the headwinds to your advantage, you need to find your unique opportunities and risks.
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Technology Mid-market tech companies lead the way on diversity and inclusionWe explore how the mid-market tech sector can continue to build and nurture a culture that’s increasingly more diverse and inclusive for women.
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Tax Resetting global tax rules after the pandemicBusinesses are seeing rising challenges, and finance heads are dealing with a range of new measures. To say the next 12 months are critical for businesses is an understatement.
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TECHNOLOGY International tax reform: the potential impact on the technology industryIn this article, we’ve summarised key elements of the global tax reform proposals, their potential impact on technology industry and advice from our digital tax specialists on what technology companies can do to prepare.
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Telecoms Can tech and telecom leverage economic headwindsAs most businesses brace for an economic downturn, tech and telecom could see new prospects. But, to turn the headwinds to your advantage, you need to find your unique opportunities and risks.
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TMT TMT industry: Fully charged or on standby?Our research revealed five key trends that resonated with Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) industry leaders around the world. We asked a panel of our experts from UK, US, India Ireland and Germany, to give us their reaction to the findings.
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Cybersecurity One size fits nothingTechnology companies must adopt a new approach to digital risk: those that successfully develop a reputation for digital trust by demonstrating an unwavering commitment to cyber security and data privacy will be able to carve out a competitive advantage.
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Technology, media & telecommunications Why it’s time for a 5G reality checkFigures suggest the mobile sector is maturing. While data usage continues to soar, mobile revenues are expected to flatten out over the next few years.
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International business Mid-market businesses lifted by rising tide of optimismOptimism among global mid-market business leaders rose to 67% in the first half of this year and they are markedly more optimistic about their prospects with global optimism having increased by 8%.
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Global business pulse - industry analysis Mid-market recovery spreads to more industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
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Hotels COVID-19: Checking in with the hotel industry one year onCOVID-19 provided some hard lessons for the hotel sector. It is time to turn those into sustainable and well executed growth strategies.
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Global business pulse - industry analysis A very uneven recovery across industriesThe index results for 13 key industries of the mid-market reveals a very uneven recovery from COVID-19
- By topic
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Women in Business 2024
2024 marks the 20th year of monitoring and measuring the proportion of women occupying senior management roles around the world.
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COP28: Mid-market firms should seize the opportunity from adaption and innovation
COP28 was the first time there has been a global stocktake on progress against the Paris Agreement.
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Scanning the horizon: Mid-market sets sights on global trade growth
The latest International Business Report (IBR) data shows that mid-market businesses have high expectations for global trade.
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Mid-market sees business optimism reach record high
Grant Thornton's latest International Business Report (IBR) sees optimism among mid-market business leaders reach a record high with 74% optimistic about the outlook for their economy over the next 12 months.
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Women in tech: A pathway to gender balance in top tech roles
Grant Thornton’s 2024 Women in Business data suggests we are far from achieving parity within the mid-market technology sector.
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Women in leadership: a pathway to better performance
What makes the benefits of gender parity compelling is the impact it can have on commercial performance.
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Women in Business 2024
2024 marks the 20th year of monitoring and measuring the proportion of women occupying senior management roles around the world.
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Women in business: Regional picture
We saw an increase in the percentage of senior management roles held by women, on a global level, but there are some significant regional and country variations.
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Pathways to Parity: Leading the way
To push towards parity of senior management roles held by women, who leads within an organisation is vital.
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Generating real change with a long-term focus
The most successful strategy to achieve parity of women in senior management is one which stands alone, independent of an ESG strategy.
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People at the heart of great business
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Focusing and developing a solid strategy around diversity, equity and inclusion
Grant Thornton Greece is pioneering a growing set of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives that centre around three strategic pillars.
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Ten considerations for preparing TCFD climate-related financial disclosures
Insights for organisations preparing to implement the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)’s Standards.
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COP28
COP28 was the first time there has been a global stocktake on progress against the Paris Agreement.
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Transition Plan Taskforce publishes its final disclosure framework
As organisations in the private sector make commitments and plans to reach net zero, there's a growing need for stakeholders to be able to assess the credibility of their transition plans.
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Promoting ESG excellence through tax
ESG considerations have never been more important for an organisation’s long-term success, but how can tax be used to add value to an ESG agenda?
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International business: Mid-market growth and expansion
The mid-market looks to international business opportunities for growth.
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Top five constraints to international business in the mid-market
Top five major constraints that are testing the mid-market’s ability to grow their businesses internationally.
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Brand and international marketing – breaking global barriers
Brand has been identified as a key driver of mid-market success when looking to grow and develop international business.
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The key to international business: Investing in people
How can recruitment and retention help grow international business?
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Building resilience in international business
Evolving supply chains and trade patterns amid ongoing global uncertainty.
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IFRS Alerts
IFRS Alerts covering the latest changes published by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
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Example Financial Statements
General guidance for preparers of financial statements that supports the commitment to high quality, consistent application of IFRS.
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Insights into IFRS 2
Insights into IFRS 2 summarises the key areas of the Standard, highlighting aspects that are more difficult to interpret and revisiting the most relevant features that could impact your business.
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IFRS 3
Mergers and acquisitions are becoming more common as entities aim to achieve their growth objectives. IFRS 3 ‘Business Combinations’ contains the requirements for these transactions.
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IFRS 8
Our ‘Insights into IFRS 8’ series considers some key implementation issues and includes interpretational guidance in certain problematic areas.
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IFRS 16
Are you ready for IFRS 16? This series of insights will help you prepare.
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IAS 36
Insights into IAS 36 provides assistance for preparers of financial statements and help where confusion has been seen in practice.
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IFRS 17
Explaining the key features of the Standard and providing insights into its application and impact.
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Pillar 2
Key updates and support for the global implementation of Pillar 2.
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Global expatriate tax guide
Growing businesses that send their greatest assets – their people – overseas to work can face certain tax burdens, our global guide highlights the common tax rates and issues.
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International indirect tax guide
Navigating the global VAT, GST and sales tax landscape.
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Global transfer pricing guide
Helping you easily find everything you need to know about the rules and regulations regarding transfer pricing and Country by Country reporting for every country you do business with.
Annual financial statements will always be a critical communication to investors and other stakeholders. But how effective will they be in explaining to your stakeholders how the global COVID-19 pandemic has affected your organisation?
While the focus over the last three years has been on explaining the introduction of new International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) dealing with revenue, financial instruments and leasing, readers of the financial statements will want to know how the global pandemic changed the business.
No matter what situation exists, preparers of financial statements need to get the content right. When drafting the financial statements that will be issued, management should be mindful of what others have done – particularly businesses in the same industry sector – when they tell their own COVID-19 story and they should never lose sight of what makes their business unique. This will take time and effort because the recognition, measurement and disclosure requirements set out in IFRS issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) can be complex and demanding.
Unfortunately, many users complain that IFRS generates financial statements that are cluttered, and important information is often hard to find.
Telling the COVID-19 story is not only about reflecting what the financial reporting standards require disclosure on. It is also about correctly applying the materiality concept to disclosure and not being fearful of regulatory and stakeholder challenge. A reluctance to deviate from well-established practices by adopting a ‘safety first’ mindset often results in duplication, irrelevance and many ‘boilerplate’ disclosures which is not what users, including many securities and audit regulators, want to see.
In light of COVID-19, those charged with the governance of reporting entities, particularly those that are listed, have another opportunity to reflect on how they want to tell their story of their business activities throughout 2020 and how they are responding to the pandemic. The art, rather than the science, of issuing high-quality financial statements in 2021 is to prepare those that will not only comply with all the technical requirements set out in IFRS, but also effectively communicate how the entity has adapted and reacted to the environment it has been operating in.
This publication describes and illustrates how entities can better tell their COVID-19 story using four key tools we believe can help explain what has happened over the last 12 months.
1. Comply but communicate
Telling the COVID-19 story effectively not only requires entities to comply with applicable accounting standards and regulations, their financial statements should also become an effective part of the wider communication to their stakeholders.
Be mindful that the financial statements are just one ‘piece of the puzzle’ when communicating with stakeholders. Make them more effective by considering the following:
- Holistic approach – ensure the overall communication is effective by having a holistic approach. This means the annual report, which includes the financial statements, read as a whole, should deliver a consistent and coherent message throughout.
- Be transparent with APMs – if using alternative performance measures (APMs), do so transparently, making sure users do not misinterpret them. Do this by providing useful additional information which supports and explains how COVID-19 has impacted the entity.
2. Omit the immaterial
Make effective use of materiality to enhance the clarity and conciseness of the financial statements.
Incorrectly applying the concept of materiality is perceived to be one of the main drivers for overloaded financial statements. Information should only be disclosed if it is material. It is material if it could influence users’ decisions which are based on the financial statements.
The materiality assessment is the ‘filter’ in deciding what information to disclose and what to omit. Once it has been determined which specific line items require disclosure, entities should assess what to disclose about these items, including how much detail to provide and how best to organise the information in the financial statements. This can be done using a two-stage filtering process as follows:
- firstly, filter #1 is to consider if the underlying item (ie the amount recognised or the unrecognised event or risk) is itself material because of its size or its nature, and
- if it is, filter #2 then applies to determine which specific disclosures (and level of detail) need to be provided for each item.
3. Re-think the notes
Re-evaluate how the notes to the financial statements are organised to improve their effectiveness as a communication tool.
Being the largest section of the financial statements, the notes can have the greatest impact on the effectiveness of the financial statements as a communication tool. Improve the effectiveness of the notes by:
- Re-organising the notes – move away from the traditional order of the notes. Group the notes into various categories, placing the most critical information upfront. COVID-19 has placed a renewed emphasis on various elements within the financial statements such as going concern, impairment and how revenue is being recognised. Be mindful of the importance of these topics to the readers of the financial statements by making these some of the first topics that are included in the notes to the financial statements.
- Signposting – assist users in navigating their way through the financial statements through the effective use of signposting, cross-referencing and indexing.
4. Prioritise the policies
The financial statements need only disclose the most significant accounting policies. The disclosures made should be relevant, specific to the reporting entity and in light of COVID-19 explain how the accounting policies have been applied throughout the reporting period.
The aim of accounting policy disclosures is to help users properly understand how the amounts included the financial statements were determined. To make accounting policy disclosures effective preparers should:
- Make them significant – remove non-significant disclosures that do not add any value, and make sure that new accounting policies are included if, for example, government grants have been received and the amounts involved are material. Use judgement to determine whether the accounting policies are significant and do not fall into the trap of automatically including what was reported last year. Consider not only the materiality of the balances or transactions affected by the policy but also other factors including the nature of the entity’s operations in light of the pandemic.
- Be clear and specific – reduce generic disclosures (for example those that summarise the recognition and measurement requirements in the accounting standards) and develop disclosures that explain in detail how the entity has applied the policies (eg revenues that are recognised over time as opposed to at a point in time).
- Articulate key estimates and judgements – effective disclosures about the most important estimates and judgements provide investors with a useful understanding of the amount included in the financial statements. So:
- for estimates, focus on the most difficult, subjective and complex estimates. Include details of how the estimate was derived, key assumptions involved, the process for reviewing the amounts disclosed and a sensitivity analysis, and
- for judgements, provide sufficient background information on each judgement, and explain how they were made.
Technical support and assistance
We can help you get up to date with current trends in financial reporting by providing:
- thought leadership insights
- examples of best practice disclosures
- commentary on emerging practices
- support you to enhance the content and impacts of your annual reports.
Financial statements
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In making these changes, one thing does not change. Financial reporting is a regulated activity and compliance with these requirements is essential. Getting the content of the financial statements right, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic will require the application of professional judgement, care and attention to detail, proper planning and project management, and making sure fit-for-purpose systems and controls support the amounts included in the financial statements.
Whatever stage you are at in making improvements to the content and presentation of your annual reports, our specialists offer pragmatic solutions, whilst still complying with IFRS.
The requirements set out in IFRS are often very detailed and technical. To the untrained eye, they can appear hard to navigate. But at Grant Thornton, we have people who are well versed in their intricacies and can translate them into language that you can understand and apply to your financial statements.
We hope you found this publication useful when thinking about how to tell your COVID-19 story. If you would like to discuss any of the points raised, talk to your Grant Thornton contact now, or connect to a specialist in your country.