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The effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on the level of financial statements comparability was investigated for Russia in the current article. Canada was chosen for comparison due to the close time frame of IFRS adoption, which also allowed comparing the influence of IFRS adoption for both types of economieswell developed and emerging. Initial sample selection had been created from 23 companies that are presented on the stock exchange markets of the particular countries. Each sample contains semi-annual data for four years of the preadoption period (2008 to 2011 for Russia, 2007 to 2010 for Canada) in which companies use their home country accounting standards and four years of the postadoption period (2012 to 2015 for Russia, 2011 to 2014 for Canada) in which companies use IFRS standards. The research was performed on the country level and industry level for both countries. Two measures had been used for the research: earnings-return regression and earnings-cash flow regression. The overall result of the study shows that the application of IFRS improved information comparability between companies only in Canada, while the same was not the case for Russian companies and the cross-country comparability. However, the study confirms an increase in the comparability level in the post-adoption period in such industries as Energy and Basic materials not only between companies inside of the given country but on the cross-country level as well.

Abstract:In the modern process of globalization, IFRS standards are widely used in the financial world, Russian Federation is one of these examples. The application of IFRS in Russian Federation first began in the early 90-ies of the twentieth century. During IFRS adoption many companies were involved in this process. Nowadays, a big part of all Russian companies obligatory use IFRS standards to prepare their statements. The purpose of this article is to analyse current practices of financial reporting procedures, its compliance with the rules of the IAS 1 as well as identifying the dependencies between the auditor selection and the quality of reporting. For this paper, a special Questionnaire was developed and for each selected organization a special profile, which included analysis of all financial statements for the period of the 2015 year was created. The study shows that the financial reports quality of the largest Russian companies on a high level. However, many companies face the problem of RAS and IFRS differences during reports transformation that directly influences its quality. During the study process it becomes clear, that auditor has a direct impact on the financial statements quality.