The Financial Reporting Standards Council (FRSC) has issued an Invitation to Comment on Draft Interpretation D22, Hedges of a Net Investment in a Foreign Operation, issued by the International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC), the interpretative arm of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

IFRIC Draft Interpretation D22 clarifies two issues that have arisen on two accounting standards – IAS 21, The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates, and IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement, – about the accounting for hedging foreign currency risk within a company and its foreign operations. The IFRIC proposal clarifies what qualifies as a risk in the hedge of a net investment in a foreign operation and where, within a group, the instrument that offsets that risk may be held.

In some companies, the currency that is used to present financial statements (the presentation currency) differs from the currency that the company or its foreign subsidiaries use daily and in which they generate net cash flows (the operating, or functional, currency). At present, some companies use hedge accounting when ‘translating’ that functional currency into the presentation currency. The IFRIC takes the view that this mere translation of currency for presentational use does not represent a hedgeable economic risk. Consequently, it proposes not to allow the use of hedge accounting when translating a functional currency into a presentation currency. The IFRIC concluded that the hedged risk is the foreign currency exposure arising between the functional
currency of the foreign operation and the functional currency of any parent entity within the group structure. Clarification was needed on whether a company could account for a hedged foreign currency risk only in the immediate parent entity, only in the main parent entity, or in those or any intermediate parent entity of the foreign subsidiary.

IFRIC Draft Interpretation D22 also considers which individual entity within a group structure can hold a hedging instrument. The IFRIC proposes that the hedging instrument can be held by any subsidiary or parent entity within a group regardless of the entity’s functional currency. To assess how effective the hedging instrument is in offsetting the risk from the foreign operation, the company must calculate the change in value of the hedging instrument in the functional currency of the parent hedging its risk and not the functional currency of the subsidiary holding the instrument.

The FRSC Invitation to Comment and IFRIC Draft Interpretation D22 may be downloaded from the Philippine Financial Reporting Standards (PFRS) website, within the PICPA website (www.picpa.com.ph). IFRIC Draft Interpretation D22 may also be downloaded from the IASB website (www.iasb.org).

The FRSC invites comments on IFRIC Draft Interpretation D22 by October 5, 2007, to enable the Council to consider and include comments from Philippine respondents in its response to the IASB.