HI,
Under IFRS2, cancellation of share option schemes for employees (e.g.when the option is out-of-the-money so it no more provides the necessary incentive it was designated to), apart from the reason of the cancellation being failure to meet the non-market vesting condition, is accounted for as acceleration of vesting and the standard requires that the entity recognize immediately the amount that otherwise would have been recognized for services received over the remainder of the vesting period. this means that if the employee had to serve , say, four years before the options vested and the option was cancelled at the end of the first year, the entity has to recognize the remainder of the service costs, i.e. the costs that otherwise would have spread over three additional years fully and immediately in the year of cancellation, the accounting entry being debiting the service cost for the three-year costs and crediting the equity reserve.
what is the idea, or insight, behind the requirement that cancellation shall accelerate vesting, that in turn results in recognizing the costs that have not yet been incurred and how does that add to faithful presentation? besides, what is the idea behind crediting of the equity reserve by the three year cost (in my example) and what does it mean in practice? does it mean that the employee eventually still gets the shares upon the cancellation? in addition, is the posting of the three-year costs in one year considered some kind of penalty for the cancellation and does it therefore mean that the cost of service provided by the employees just got three times more expensive in the given year due to that cancellation? if the employees are not given shares upon the cancellation, what happens with the equity reserve created by the three-year charge?
thank you.
