The Investment Management industry faces an ever-increasing demand for transparency by stakeholders, further amplified in times of uncertainties. As investment managers seek opportunities to enter global markets, any strategy and product reporting to stakeholders, including financial statements, must be clearly understood, meet local requirements, and allow for comparison between the many investment products offered.

While one globally accepted financial reporting standard that acknowledges stakeholders’ needs and the industry’s unique nature remains the ideal, different accounting standards are still used to prepare the financial statements of investment funds worldwide.

This document highlights selected differences between the major sets of accounting standards (IFRS, US GAAP and Luxembourg GAAP) applied to investment funds. While there are other significant global investment fund jurisdictions, their accounting standards tend to allow or closely follow the principles of IFRS.