Editorial

This year's IFRS Foundation annual conference took place, as usual, in London in June. What was less usual was that the chair of the trustees, Erkki Liikanen, took the floor to welcome the audience and to talk about how the IFRS Foundation is evolving to ensure that it is fit for the future. His address included the news that the Foundation is planning to reduce the size of the boards for both the IASB and the ISSB from 14 to 10 members each by the end of 2028. The decision seems to be driven largely by pressure on costs in the light of the fact that the Foundation reported a deficit of income over expenditure for the year ending 31 December 2024 of £1.8 million (compared to a surplus of £0.8 million in 2023). To put this loss in context, revenue for 2024 was £67.6 million (2023: £68.4 million), and operating expenses were £68.9 million (2023: £67.5 million). Furthermore, excluding the chairs and vice chairs, board members' average remuneration was £518,000. Losing eight members should therefore generate a considerable cost saving. Nonetheless, while 14 might be considered to be a large number of members for a board (the FASB, for example, has just seven members), a reduction of nearly 30 per cent is significant, and the key question that will concern stakeholders is what effect this will have on the work of the boards.