Impact of IRFS adoption on Brazilian sanitation companies

The enactment of Law No. 11,638 on 28 December 2007 paved the way for the convergence of Brazilian and international accounting standards, requiring the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for consolidated financial statements from 2010 onwards. Experiences in other countries showed that the process of converging financial statements to IFRS was complex and lengthy, resulting in significant impacts on companies’ results and net equity, with significant effects on their share prices in the capital markets. Considering that such changes could have significant economic impacts on Brazilian companies, the objective of this study was to analyse, based on the perception of accounting professionals, what the difficulties in adopting IFRS might be and the likely impacts on equity and results for Brazilian sanitation companies.