This course is designed to provide a working understanding of financial statements and the meaning of accounting numbers based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Our intention is to place reporting in its business context, and to make it clear to managers how accounting reflects their work and is an integral part of understanding the enterprise and business transactions. We therefore emphasize working with the original source - the standards itself - in order to use financial reporting as a corporate and business language supporting management and investor decisions in a global context. The first part of the course therefore provides an overview on the legislative background, standard setting and framework. The second part analyses selected standards. The third part provides an introduction to group accounting and first time adoption of IFRS.

Lecturer: Dr. Caterina Pesci (University of Trento - Italy)