A study of the trend of foreign currency disclosure practices by publicly-listed Singapore companies and their compliance with SAS 20

• Main Authors: Chang, Siew Ching, Chua, Evelyn Lin Lin, Tan, Lay Khim
• Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Accounting
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/55489
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Previous research on foreign currency accounting suggested that this is a highly controversial area. This research concentrated on several foreign currency accounting issues such as: economic consequences of foreign currency accounting standards; compliance with foreign currency disclosure requirements; translation of foreign currency long-term monetary items; and others. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to examine the extent of compliance by Singapore companies with the Statement of Accounting Standard No. 20 (Accounting for the Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates) issued by The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore in November 1986. For this purpose, the foreign currency disclosure practices of the top one hundred listed Singapore companies were examined for five years prior to and five years after the issuance of SAS 20. Aware of the limitations of other research methodologies such as the survey research, where heavy reliance must be placed on the respondents’ reply, in this stud, a content analysis methodology was adopted. The results showed that for the five-year period after the release of SAS 20, compliance has, in many aspects, improved. Analysis by industry groupings revealed that companies in the trading and the service industries showed greater improvement in their compliance with SAS 20 since its promulgation.