Fortune Minerals — Adoption of IFRS

The controller of a publicly traded mining company must make a series of recommendations to the chief executive officer and chief financial officer of the company as it prepares to adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Major decisions revolve around accounting for the company’s fixed assets and mining properties — specifically, whether to capitalize or expense certain items, whether to record certain assets at their values of historical costs, the company’s depreciation policy, and other issues around impairments of capital assets. The controller also considers the recent International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) discussion paper on accounting for extractive resources and its possible implications to the company in the future.