Convergence to international financial reporting standards (IFRS): The need to tighten the rule on divisible profit

The issue of convergence with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been a subject of increasing academic debate. One of the issues raised is that the IFRS are fair value based, and in some instances, recognizes unrealized gains and thus, include them in the income statement. Despite resistance, it is a foregone conclusion that the IFRS convergence exercise will continue to gain momentum. This article focuses on the importance of examining the existing legislative requirements that form part of the national specificities. As an illustration, this article highlights the importance to resolve the issue on the size of profit which may be legally distributed to shareholders as dividend. An examination on the legal approaches to the payment of dividends in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and Singapore found most of them to be lacking.