FASB Defers Employee Benefit Plan Disclosure Requirement

The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Wednesday to indefinitely defer certain disclosures about investments held by a nonpublic employee benefit plan in its plan sponsor’s own nonpublic equity securities. 

The deferral comes in response to concerns from private companies that disclosing the information might expose their proprietary financial details.

“Today’s decision is responsive to private company stakeholders, addressing their concern that certain disclosure requirements would potentially provide proprietary information when their employee benefit plans’ financial statements are posted on the plan regulator’s website,” said FASB chairman Leslie F. Seidman in a statement.

The indefinite deferral applies to disclosures of certain quantitative information about the significant unobservable inputs used in Level 3 fair value measurement for investments held by certain employee benefit plans. The deferral applies specifically to employee benefit plans—other than those plans that are subject to Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements—that hold investments in their plan sponsors’ own nonpublic entity equity securities, including equity securities of their nonpublic affiliated entities.

FASB said it plans to issue an Accounting Standards Update, Fair Value Measurement (Topic 820): Deferral of the Effective Date of Certain Disclosures for Nonpublic Employee Benefit Plans in Update No. 2011-04, in the next few weeks.

The deferral will become effective upon issuance of the final update for all financial statements that have not yet been issued, which is expected to be issued in the next few weeks. It will be available on FASB’s Web site, www.fasb.org.

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