Fair value accounting is an essential feature of International Financial Reporting Standards. Even though this accounting method did not spark the financial crisis, it did enhance its impact. As a consequence of the financial crisis the IASB amended IAS 39 to override the fair value recognition. The amendments to IAS 39 & IFRS 7 permitted reclassifications of the categories Held for Trading and Available for Sale, some of which had explicitly been forbidden prior to the amendment. Critics argue that these modifications to IAS 39 made it possible to camouflage losses of hundreds of billions of euros. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the amendment to IAS 39 & IFRS 7 by conducting a survey of the banking sector. Furthermore fair value accounting in general is critically discussed.
Škoda et al. (Mon,) studied this question.