Impact and Implications of International Financial Reporting Standards in the UK: Evidence from the Alternative Investment Market

This paper investigates implications of the IFRS adoption from the perspective of small and growing companies listed on the UK Alternative Investment Market (AIM). The study considers the cost-benefit issues of the IFRS adoption and investigates its economic consequences. The results reveal that only a small number of comparatively larger AIM companies have voluntarily adopted IFRS for some anticipated economic objectives. The results also suggest that most of the mandatory adopters have done so for regulation compliance purposes and that they would have not adopted IFRS if a choice was available to them. As the existing literature mainly covers the impact of IFRS adoption on large listed companies, the findings of this study will give better insights about extending IFRS to private companies. The findings show an association between the early adoption of IFRS and firm size and conclude that size matters in both the adoption and implications of the IFRS. This study also contributes to the debate on the implication of the new IFRS based UK GAAP for SMEs-FRS 102, which will replace the majority of existing UK accounting standards for SMEs with effect from 2015. Our findings have implications for managers, regulators, market participants, practitioners, and other stakeholders