The module aims to develop students’ conceptual understanding of financial reporting issues and their knowledge of the problems and proposed solutions. It will consider a number of areas where standard setting has proved to be controversial or difficult and where policy debate is continuing. We will examine what theory would suggest regarding practice, how accepted accounting conventions are applied and what actual company behaviour illustrates about the nature of financial reporting. The dominant accounting systems are International GAAP (IFRS) and, at present, US GAAP and we will study the main elements of these systems with a particular focus on the former.