The main role of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is to devise and publish International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS Standards) and revised versions of International Accounting Standards (IAS Standards). 

IAS Standards were originally published by the IASB's predecessor body, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC). 

The IASB has also published a Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting. Some of the text of this document has been transferred from the Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements published by the IASC in 1989 and adopted by the IASB in 2001. This document is not an accounting standard.

Required:

(a) Explain the main purposes of the Conceptual Framework document.

(b) Identify the objective of general purpose financial reporting, as stated in the Conceptual Framework.

(c) Identify the primary users of general purpose financial reports and four further user groups. In each case, explain what information each user group would be seeking from the financial reports.

(d) Identify and explain the assumption which (according to the Conceptual Framework) underlies the preparation of financial statements.

(e) Identify and explain the qualitative characteristics that make financial information useful.

(f) Explain why it is not always possible to produce financial statements which possess all of the qualitative characteristics discussed in (e) above.

(CIPFA)