Grappling with the practicalities

摘要

Companies preparing for International Financial Reporting Standards are now familiar with the requirement to recognise an expense over the vesting period for share options granted to employees. But there are still many practicalities to grapple with. As many companies are finding, there are some pitfalls and problems to overcome in accounting for share options for the first time. Some companies are choosing to apply IFRS 2 or FRS 20, Share-based Payment, to more share options than they are required to under the transitional rules. Applying the standard to all share options has the merit that the expense is comparable between one year and another. The pitfall is that neither IFRS 2 nor FRS 20 permits the inclusion of additional share options unless the fair value has been previously published. Many are remedying this.