Study Zone

ATC's ACCA Exam Tips (June 2010) P2ENG

The examiners name is Graham Holt, he wrote 2 articles which were based on IFRS 3 (revised 2008) that appeared in the February and April 2009 Student Accountant.

Make sure you have read these articles, Q1 will be a consolidation question which will include issues from these articles.

In March 2010 an article was written by the examiner on IFRS for small and medium sized entities (IFRS for SMEs) which relates to a new standard issued by the IASB in 2009 and may lead to a question on the topic in June 2010. This article was published in Student Accountant. This could well be his subject for the topical content question.

The examiner stresses that students should read around the subject and keep themselves up to date. He encourages students to regularly read Economist or Financial Times and look into one of the Big 4 audit companies IFRS website, the examiner himself regularly looks at these sites and may take inspiration for a question from them.

Exam Tips
Areas that feature on a regular basis in the exam are as follows;

Consolidations in Q1
Disposals (December 2009)
Step acquisitions (December 2009)
Cash flow (Dec 2008)
Foreign Sub (June 2008)
Complex group

Financial Instruments (IAS 39) to include hedge accounting
Employee benefits (IAS 19)
Leases (IAS 17)
Share-based Payments (IFRS 2)
Impairment of assets (IAS 36)
Deferred Tax (IAS 12)

As stated above, the IFRS for SMEs could well be the topical question in this exam but students should also be aware of other topical issues such as the financial crisis, Fair Value accounting and accounting for Financial Instruments.

By Phil Bradbury

[«all Studies]