Focus Group: Financial Executives, Corporate CFO's & Investment Professionals
Track Chairs: Anthony Fragnito, XII CEO & Kurt Ramin, IASB
Track Description: XBRL is appearing regularly in articles and discussions related to trends and best practices in financial and business reporting around the globe. High profile regulators, government agencies and corporations are implementing solutions based upon XBRL to improve transparency, increase efficiency and decrease regulatory burden.
As a financial executive, now is the time to learn the facts, experience the tools and view implemented applications of this exciting technology. The Financial Executive track is designed specifically with these goals. Experience real world implementations, factual presentations on the technology and its application and meet the top vendors for XBRL enabled applications and tools.
Track 1 Schedule: (see Program Schedule for full schedule)
Monday, May 5, 2008 |
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| 1:00pm - 3:00pm | XBRL for Users - an overview of the technology, its benefits and application
Extensible Business Reporting Language (“XBRL”) is a business reporting technology standard. It has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency and quality of business reporting processes and data. Efficiency and data quality improvements are achieved by utilising a single open source file format to describe and validate business data. It thereby circumvents issues that arise from non-compatible proprietary file formats, having to re-input data or resolve errors that invariably arise from manual intervention in business reporting processes. The objectives of this presentation are:
The presentation focuses on the business case for XBRL and corresponding business issues. The technical detail of XBRL is minimised and included only as necessary parts of the vocabulary explanation and demonstration of the XBRL mechanics. The presentation concludes with an overview of the issues that will confront executives and finance professionals in XBRL-based reporting environments as they mature. |
| 3:30pm - 5:00pm |
Publishing financials in XBRL - case studies Case Study 1: FinRisk – to ease and streamline your XBRL reporting From October 2007, Banks and Financial Institutions operating in France have to submit their regulatory reporting using the XBRL format. In July 2006, the French national regulator has selected Umanis to create and implement its new IT system dedicated to managing this new regulatory format. Based on its expertise and experience on the regulator side, Umanis has developed FinRisk a unique software solution that allows banks and financial institution to produce XBRL reports. FinRisk is a full XBRL solution that simplifies and speeds up the production of XBRL reports. Already selected by many French and European banks and financial institutions, FinRisk transforms your financial information into full XBRL reporting. Based on examples and case studies, we will present you how easy it is to produce your XBRL reports with FinRisk. Case Study 2: Launch of XBRL-Enabled Accounting Software for the Italian Market Beginning in March 2008, Italian companies must file their annual financial statements to the Italian Chamber of Commerce in an XBRL format. More than 900,000 companies are subject to this mandatory deposit of their balance sheets. Wolters Kluwer Italy, a division of Amsterdam-based Wolters Kluwer and a leading provider of accounting software in Italy, had to make sure our customers could meet the new filing requirement. That meant integrating an XBRL processing engine into our software package to stay competitive in the marketplace. We will share how we become the first to offer XBRL-enabled balance sheet software in the Italian market for the creation, validation and rendering of XBRL instance documents in less than five (from conceptual design , prototyping, to full tested integration) and what the benefits are for our customers. |
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 |
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| 9:00am - 10:30am |
Global Ledger - tagging at the detail level XBRL is great - but XBRL is not its best if it is not part of the financial executive applying his or her detailed knowledge of accounting, finance and operations to current business practices. XBRL's Global Ledger Framework can be a key weapon in the financial executives arsenal to establish performance benchmarks, root out inefficiencies and standardize the flow of detailed business information across the organization - department-by-department and region-by-region. This session is designed to help accounting and finance professionals gain a better understanding of the fundamentals of XBRL GL. This includes: * An introduction to XBRL GL |
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11:00am - 12:30pm |
The US GAAP and IFRS Taxonomy Project Updates XBRL US will release the US Financial Reporting taxonomies on the 28th April 2008. This session will discuss these taxonomies specifically the XBRL Architecture of the taxonomy, the processes used to build the taxonomy and overview of how the accounting content was modeled. The session will also address how the taxonomy will be maintained and supported in the future. The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation’s XBRL Team recently released the near final version of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008, which is a complete translation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) as published in the IFRS Bound Volume 2008 into XBRL. The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is published in the same languages as the IFRS Bound Volume 2008. The session intends to provide an update on the technical choices for re-building the IFRS Taxonomy but also will explain, for accountants and domain experts, how the accounting principles have been “XBRL-ised”. |
| 1:30pm - 3:00pm | Transparency and regulated information in Europe
For each admission request of a financial instrument to a regulated market, the issuer in question must furnish financial information in accordance with the requirements of the Prospectus Directive. This information, though rich and exhaustive, is difficult to exploit efficiently due to its paper format. During the course of this session we will explore the possibilities offered by XBRL and demonstrate, thanks to an XBRL prospectus prototype, the feasibility to dematerialize such information in order to improve access and analysis. Infogreffe, the computer platform for the French registers has engaged a large project which will enable any French company to make dematerialized deposits of its annual accounts on a web portal. This service will be available on June 2008. Currently, the French companies deliver their annual accounts based on the paper format directly on the registers service counters. From June, the companies will have access to a web portal (i-greffe) on which they will unload their annual accounts. For this option, three electronic formats will be available: PDF, JPEG and XBRL. However, the delivery based on the paper format directly on the registers service counters will remain possible as well. As part of the 17th XBRL international conference, Infogreffe will introduce its activities, its project in order to implement its web portal for dematerialized annual accounts deposits. Infogreffe will explain why and how the XBRL technology will enable large qualitative benefits for companies as well as for analysts. Some ideas for building strong links with other European entities which have an equivalent mission to Infogreffe will be presented as well. |
| 3:30pm - 5:00pm |
Enabling Stock Selection and Increasing Institutional Reach: How SME can be use XBRL for increased Capital Markets Awareness Investors are always on the lookout for an undervalued company with a solid growth story, and they like it even better if they are first to discover the stock. What can small caps do to increase their capital market visibility? They should provide capital markets with an XBRL “profile sheet” that contains a sufficient number of financials including some GAAP items but mostly non-GAAP performance data to allow for a sufficiently granular profile of the company. A sufficient number would be some 20 to 25 items, including past-performance and forward-looking information. An XBRL profile sheet would in colloquial terms serve as an entrée or a business card. Ralf Frank will report on a project, which has been launched by DVFA, the German Society of Investment Professionals. Philip Moyer, CEO and President of EDGAR Online Inc. will discuss the hidden financial data contained in XBRL. he will describe how investors and analysts can use this information and XBRL to gain a better prespective on companies they cover. He will also explain how XBRL provides an opportunity for reporting companies to better communicate their message and differentiate their business. |
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 |
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| 2:00pm - 3:30pm | The theme and presentations at the XII 17th International Conference “XBRL in Action” is an indication that XBRL has matured both as a technology and as an implemented solution to business reporting needs around the globe.
This panel session, consisting of representatives from the US SEC, the US GAAP and IASB taxonomy projects, financial executives from both SME and large cap corporations and investment professionals will discuss the future of XBRL with respect to regulated business reporting and investor/analyst consumption of XBRL data. The challenges and opportunity for the large scale availability of XBRL enabled business data will be discussed through panel statements and audience generated questions to the panel. |
| 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
How to Create XBRL-formatted financials for the SEC EDGAR system This free workshop is designed to help European-based public companies file financial statements to the SEC EDGAR System. Senior officials from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will be present to answer questions from public company executives about integrating XBRL into their business reporting process. You will see demonstrations how to create XBRL-enabled financial documents and learn how to participate in the public review of the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies. The workshop will also feature case studies from foreign companies that are participating in the SEC Voluntary Filing Program. Topics covered include: * XBRL and What It Means to You |
