Accounting for long-term investments

The question of how best to account for long-term investments seems itself to have been going on forever. In the recent past, it attracted considerable debate in Europe before and during the endorsement of IFRS 9, Financial Instruments, and it has been continuously debated ever since. However, it is not only in Europe that this accounting requirement, brought in by IFRS, has attracted criticism. In the past year some well-known names have been critical of the matching requirements under US GAAP. This article considers the latest developments on both sides of the Atlantic.