Denmark

In Denmark, the introduction of new legislation on accounting has split Parliament along party lines on a number of occasions, from the earliest bills requiring companies to make their accounts public to the more recent attempts to remove the privileges enjoyed by companies exempted from the preparation of consolidated accounts. Traditionally, the outcome was that Denmark saw relatively little government intervention in business, and corporate accountability remained at a low level for many years. More recently, however, there have been a number of major changes in the regulation of Danish financial reporting, many of which have been greatly influenced by developments at the international level. The process of change started in the late 1970s when the Danish auditing profession adopted IAS as a surrogate for national standards. These were translated into Danish by the Institute of StateAuthorised Public Accountants (Foreningen af Statsautoriserede Revisorer, or FSR) and given a Danish preface with recommendations concerning their application under local conditions. At the time, the use of IASs by companies was voluntary, but accounting regulation through statute soon followed and, in 1981, a new Financial Statements Act (A A rsregnskabsloven) containing detailed rules on financial disclosure and accounting methods was adopted in order to implement the Fourth European Directive. This combination of private and public regulation has continued to the present day in Denmark.