Recent TRG blog posts

Financial analysis dates back centuries, at least to the codification of double-entry bookkeeping in the 15th century. The analysis of balance sheets and income statements has long served as the basis of credit and lending decisions.

The discipline of management accounting developed in the early 20th century as a way of using accounting data to keep corporate executives and managers informed about what happened or is happening and why.

As the world is heading towards an uncertain future, businesses can expect some unexpected events along the way. Therefore, agility needs to be embedded in every business process, including corporate financial planning.

In today’s fast-moving world, companies have to juggle multiple priorities when managing their business, such as overseeing financials transactions, measuring corporate performance, attesting financial reports, timely closing and consolidating financial data. Thus, it is no surprise that CFOs are always aiming to close books and comply with regulations faster and more efficiently.

In two previous posts, we have discussed some issues with annual reports and financial reviews of companies in Vietnam. What can be done to improve them? Preparing a financial report is an art that requires authenticity rather than a motive to polish a company’s image.

In the previous post, we have touched upon the current issues with annual reports in Vietnam. The financial review in an annual report, including financial statements and footnotes, is of particular interest to investors. Nonetheless, there are differences between the way this section is approached in Vietnam and in Western countries such as the US and UK due to legal, social, cultural and political dissimilarities.

Annual report – As sad as it may seem, the concept of preparing/using the document is still a grey area in Vietnam. According to the Ministry of Finance, to date there are 1,690 public companies in Vietnam, 704 of which are listed in 2 stock markets. However, in 2011, only 21 out of 695 listed companies sufficiently met mandatory regulations regarding information disclosure.

The financial consolidation  process in a corporation usually begins with capturing business transactions and events and closing sub ledgers into general ledgers. It often involves reconciliations of financial statements from different subsidiaries as well as dealing with minority interest and intercompany transactions . As companies grow, so does the number of entities needing to be consolidated. The consolidation process can be complicated for corporations with multiple subsidiaries and associates, especially when their consolidation system is manual, or not integrated.

Before we discuss financial consolidation, it’s important to note the following definitions (IAS 27):