By Clare Harrison
March 5, 2008
US drive on online reporting language will push UK to tipping point
LONDON -- The SEC's drive to make XBRL mandatory will drive forward change in Britain, predicts a UK-based specialist.
The UK's Investor Relations Society (IRS) hosted the discussion yesterday as part of its program of webinars entitled: 'XBRL: are more headaches heading your way? '
The UK has been slow in moving toward XBRL - regulator the Financial Services Authority and the London Stock Exchange have both adopted a wait-and-see approach - but interest is growing.
Some 66 percent of participants logging on for the IRS webinar admitted to having no experience of XBRL but over 50 percent expected to be using it within the next 12 months.
Dr Joanne Locke, research fellow from Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham, predicted that the new mindset in the UK could be fuelled by developments in the US. 'It may be that the US push toward XBRL will, in the end, motivate national bodies to adopt XBRL tags,' she said.
She added that providing information with this extra functionality could be a good way to attract more investment from the US. 'Early adopters could earn kudos from the market as well as benefit from more input on the taxonomies (the XBRL classification schemes),' she noted.
The session included an update on global XBRL adoption from Mike Willis, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He outlined developments including Tokyo's plans to mandate XBRL from April this year.
Questions then inevitably turned to cost. 'There are several plug-ins available, some of which are open-source, but the cost really comes in mapping the underlying taxonomies,' Willis explained.
Whatever happens, the nature of European information dissemination means a Europe-wide regulatory impetus is unlikely. 'The bottom line is that European regulators are looking at an integrated network of national databases,' said Locke.
