Final Jenkins Committee report debuts at symposium.

• Position: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Special Committee on Financial Reporting - From FEI

At a symposium held on October 3, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Special Committee on Financial Reporting released an executive summary of its final report. [At this writing, the Special Committee's full report is to be published sometime in the fall.] The committee, often called the Jenkins Committee for its chairman, Edmund L. Jenkins, was formed in 1991 to address the relevance and usefulness of business reporting. The symposium included representatives of the committee, FEI, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Association for Investment Management and Research and other organizations.

The recommendations in the summary focus on the need for standard setters to develop a comprehensive, flexible business-reporting model that more fully addresses user needs than present models do. The report calls for increased disclosure of business-segment information; improved accounting and disclosure standards for innovative financial instruments like derivatives; increased disclosures of off-balance-sheet financing arrangements; separate reporting of core and noncore activities; more detailed disclosures of risks and uncertainties; and improved quarterly reporting.

Kenneth Johnson, vice president and corporate controller of Motorola and the FEI representative at the symposium, commended the committee for conducting a comprehensive survey of user needs, although he and Susan Koski-Grafer, vice president-professional development at FEI, note that FEI's response to the recommendations is likely to be mixed. While the committee deserves praise for its efforts to seek input from many sources and for reaching some conclusions with merit, many FEI members are concerned that some of its recommendations are far too sweeping and impractical, or are not fully supported by what users say they need, Koski-Grafer says.

FEI members generally agree with the Special Committee's emphasis on improving reporting...