IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ausact/v24y2014i2p134-153.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liberal Fair Value Accounting in Banks: A South African Case Study

Author

Listed:
  • Phillip de Jager

Abstract

type="main"> Research findings on the role of fair value accounting (FVA) in the global financial crisis suggest that FVA is not applied neutrally by banks. The results of FVA are accepted when they contribute to higher profits and are actively resisted when they lead to losses. The aim of this article is to investigate how FVA is practically applied by banks in detail. The focus is on banks as most of their assets are financial instruments and thus potentially fair valued, and banks’ behaviour is significantly influenced by their regulatory environment. The research objective is pursued by using a case study of two South African banks. One of these is the largest and most systemically important bank in the South African system and the other is on the crossover between systemic and not systemic. It is found that FVA as applied by these two banks is not neutral. Also included is a demonstration of a method to derive the unrealised portion of profit and equity, the identification of the gap between assets and liabilities at fair value as the driver of where in a banking group FVA profits and losses are realised, and the finding that the restatement of comparative figures was used to circumvent the prohibition on reclassifications into and out of the ‘designated as at fair value’ category.

Suggested Citation

  • Phillip de Jager, 2014. "Liberal Fair Value Accounting in Banks: A South African Case Study," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 24(2), pages 134-153, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ausact:v:24:y:2014:i:2:p:134-153
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/auar.12011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allen Berger & Sally Davies, 1998. "The Information Content of Bank Examinations," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 14(2), pages 117-144, October.
    2. Michel Magnan, 2009. "Fair Value Accounting and the Financial Crisis: Messenger or Contributor?," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-27, CIRANO.
    3. Berger, Allen N. & Herring, Richard J. & Szego, Giorgio P., 1995. "The role of capital in financial institutions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 393-430, June.
    4. Dushyantkumar Vyas, 2011. "The Timeliness of Accounting Write‐Downs by U.S. Financial Institutions During the Financial Crisis of 2007–2008," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 823-860, June.
    5. Michel Magnan & Daniel Thornton, 2009. "Fair Value Accounting," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-47, CIRANO.
    6. Krainer, John & Lopez, Jose A, 2004. "Incorporating Equity Market Information into Supervisory Monitoring Models," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(6), pages 1043-1067, December.
    7. Laux, Christian & Leuz, Christian, 2009. "The crisis of fair-value accounting: Making sense of the recent debate," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 826-834, August.
    8. Merton, Robert C., 1977. "An analytic derivation of the cost of deposit insurance and loan guarantees An application of modern option pricing theory," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 3-11, June.
    9. Michel L. Magnan, 2009. "Fair Value Accounting and the Financial Crisis: Messenger or Contributor?," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 189-213, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Josef Jílek, 2016. "‘Fair Value’ of Core Deposits in the EU version of IFRS: A Critical Review," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 26(3), pages 312-325, September.
    2. Mi Joo Lee & In Tae Hwang & Sun Min Kang, 2020. "The Effect of Forward‐looking Criteria and IFRS on the Informativeness of Banks’ Loan Loss Allowances: Evidence from Korea," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 30(2), pages 85-104, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel Mügge & Bart Stellinga, 2015. "The unstable core of global finance: Contingent valuation and governance of international accounting standards," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 47-62, March.
    2. Michel Magnan & Haiping Wang & Yaqi Shi(Sans nom), 2016. "Fair Value Accounting and the Cost of Debt," CIRANO Working Papers 2016s-32, CIRANO.
    3. Cătălina Gorgan & Vasile Gorgan & Valentin Florentin Dumitru & Ileana Cosmina Pitulice, 2012. "The Evolution of the Accounting Practices During the Recent Economic Crisis: Empirical Survey Regarding the Earnings Management," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 14(32), pages 550-562, June.
    4. Tamás Szücs & József Ulbert, 2017. "Role and Measurement of Fair Valuation in the Hungarian Credit Institution Sector," Financial and Economic Review, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 16(3), pages 51-73.
    5. Yuri Biondi & Pierpaolo Giannoccolo, 2015. "Share price formation, market exuberance and financial stability under alternative accounting regimes," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(2), pages 333-362, October.
    6. Bengtsson, Elias, 2011. "Repoliticalization of accounting standard setting—The IASB, the EU and the global financial crisis," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 567-580.
    7. Palea, Vera & Biancone, Paolo Pietro, 2017. "Which Accounting Rules for Economic and Social Sustainable Development? Engaging Critically with IFRS Adoption in the EU," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201733, University of Turin.
    8. David Procházka, 2011. "The Role of Fair Value Measurement in the Recent Financial Crunch," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2011(1), pages 71-88.
    9. Nicoleta Farcane & Delia Deliu & Maria Gheorghian, 2011. "Auditing Fair Values In A Sensitive Socio-Economical Context," Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, Faculty of Sciences, "1 Decembrie 1918" University, Alba Iulia, vol. 2(13), pages 1-19.
    10. Volkova, O., 2018. "Fair Value in Finance: Fifty Shades of Fairness," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 85-109.
    11. Ozili, Peterson K, 2021. "Accounting and financial reporting during a pandemic," MPRA Paper 105183, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Tamer Elshandidy & Ahmed Hassanein, 2014. "Do IFRS and board of directors' independence affect accounting conservatism?," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(16), pages 1091-1102, August.
    13. Costel Istrate & Bogdan Robu Ioan, 2014. "L'Analyse De L'Influence Des Composants Des Etats Financiers Sur La Capitalisation Boursière Des Entreprises Roumaines, Dans Les Conditions De La Crise," Post-Print hal-01899159, HAL.
    14. Michel Magnan & Garen Markarian, 2011. "Accounting, Governance and the Crisis: Is Risk the Missing Link?," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 215-231.
    15. Smith-Lacroix, Jean-Hubert & Durocher, Sylvain & Gendron, Yves, 2012. "The erosion of jurisdiction: Auditing in a market value accounting regime," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 36-53.
    16. Beatty, Anne & Liao, Scott, 2014. "Financial accounting in the banking industry: A review of the empirical literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 339-383.
    17. Lamia Chourou, 2020. "Does Religiosity Matter to Value Relevance? Evidence from U.S. Banking Firms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 675-697, March.
    18. Samira Demaria & Sandra Rigot, 2014. "IFRS Standards and Insurance Companies: What Stakes for Long-Term Investment? A French Case Explanatory Analysis," GREDEG Working Papers 2014-04, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    19. Fawzi A. Al Sawalqa, 2016. "Fair Value Accounting: A Controversial but Promising System," Accounting and Finance Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 5(1), pages 1-88, February.
    20. Salvador Carmona, 2010. "Editorial," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 1-5.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ausact:v:24:y:2014:i:2:p:134-153. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1035-6908 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.