A wisely selected supervisory board – one that doesn’t do its work only at meetings but lays down clear strategic goals for management and itself and meters them constantly, while serving as a mentor for executives – can contribute greatly to achieving solid business results.
Late last November, trading of shares of one of the Estonia’s biggest real estate developers, Hepsor AS, began on the Nasdaq Tallinn exchange. Grant Thornton Baltic’s team of more than 10 internal and external specialists did its part to help Hepsor get listed, auditing the IFRS based financial reporting set out in the company’s listing prospectus.
The member firms of Grant Thornton International Ltd (GTIL) have extensive expertise in the application of IFRS. GTIL, through its IFRS Team, develops general guidance that supports its member firms’ commitment to high quality, consistent application of IFRS and is therefore pleased to share our insights by publishing ‘IFRS Example Consolidated Financial Statements 2021’ (Example Financial Statements).
An increasing number of companies in Estonia cross the threshold of turnover and balance sheet volume that requires them to order an audit or financial review of their 2021 annual report. On the other hand, the number of auditing companies has decreased compared to last year. How to cope with a situation with fewer service providers, increasing numbers of customers, and increasing troublesome findings regarding the quality of service provided by audit firms?
Autumn is a good time to analyse your company’s financial results for the previous financial year and determine whether you are the subject to have the annual report audited or reviewed. A convenient way to find out whether a company is subject to an audit or review requirement (the criteria are revenue, asset volume and number of employees) is the audit calculator.
Something that family businesses should consider besides earning a profit is maintaining mutual relations between family members and devoting attention early on to questions of succession if the business is to stay in the family.
The Ministry of Environment recently weighed in on packaging audit requirements. This topic pertains in particular to packaging undertakings who have already filed a packaging report for 2020 with the packaging register.
A new guide has been produced by the Auditors’ Association and the Ministry of Finance for public sector entities conducting procurements for audit services. The manual can also be useful for private sector companies.
Analysis of the correctness of data in the Commercial Register uncovered an astonishing fact: the Commercial Register data on auditors of companies contained many mistakes.
The accounting and preparation of packaging reports has become better over the years and the awareness of the importance of accounting more but there are still shortcomings in packaging reporting.
The representatives of the board of the Auditors’ Association met Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice Tõnis Saar and Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice Viljar Peep in February on the topic of developing the Commercial Register and updating register data.
Grant Thornton Baltic’s audit partner Aivar Kangust, who has been a sworn auditor for almost 30 years, points out that while indeed an audit probably wouldn’t benefit a small business very much, directors of small businesses should really be more inclined to ask for advice from auditors and business consultants – no one can possibly know everything, but it’s always good to talk to someone who does know.
It will soon be time to prepare annual reports for the financial year 2020. Estonian companies with parent companies in the UK will have to take into account new rules.
An annual report can be a great calling card and the secret to doing business more successfully, even though Estonian business people aren’t all that active in submitting them. Last year was an exception: the deadline for submission of annual financial statements was postponed by several months and a larger number of the reports came in on time.
Under a European Union directive, publicly listed companies must adopt the European Single Electronic Format, ESEF. But they will probably not have to file ESEF format annual reports for another year.
After the year of the coronavirus, there is good reason to review the value of a company’s assets with particular care. Even more, because the value of some assets may instead have increased in these muddled times, as we heard on the Äripäev Radio programme ‘Kasvukursil’, on which Mart Nõmper, Sworn Auditor and Head of Audit and Assurance Services, and Mikk Mägi, Head of Financial Advisory at the pan-Baltic audit, outsourcing and advisory services provider Grant Thornton Baltic, discussed asset valuation.