The staff of the Corporate Finance Department, which includes accountants and attorneys, is responsible for the real time monitoring of current reports issued by reporting entities, including immediate reports, as well as interim and annual financial statements. Monitoring includes the review and examination of reports with an emphasis on: level of disclosure; compliance with the provisions of the Securities Law and Regulations; enforcement of GAAP; and examination of the legal, accounting, and economic aspects involved therein. The Department’s staff is charged with handling complex, often interrelated, legal and accounting issues and with identifying market failures that require the ISA’s intervention. Special effort is dedicated – in cooperation with the Investigations and Intelligence Department - to preventative activity based on intelligence.
The Corporate Finance Department handles all the reports and disclosures that corporations (including dually listed corporations) submit under the Securities Law.
This monitoring includes an assessment and examination of the reports from a legal, accounting and economic perspective, with emphasis on the level of disclosure in the reports, compliance with the requirements of the Law and enforcement of accepted accounting rules. During its work, the staff of the department encounter complex legal and accounting issues, which are often interrelated and locates any market failures that require the intervention of the Authority. A special effort is devoted to preventative action on the basis of intelligence information and the Department works closely in this respect with the Research and Intelligence Department of the Authority.
The Department was one of the driving forces behind the setting up of Magna, the Authority's electronic web-based reporting infrastructure and continues to provide ongoing support for companies using the system.
By means of sophisticated auditing tools, the enforcement measures it has at its disposal and its cooperation with both the Research and Intelligence Department and the Investigations Department, the Corporate Finance Department is responsible for an ever increasing improvement in the level and quality of reporting and in the protection given to investors.
Among its other functions, the department is involved in examining and authorizing prospectuses of corporations and bodies that offer securities to the public in order to ascertain, inter alia, whether the level of disclosure therein meets the standards set by law and regulation.
With regard to immediate reports, the department typically examines reports about transactions with controlling shareholders, private offerings, purchase offers, debt arrangements and merger reports.
Within the framework of dealing with these reports the Department’s staff are required to deal with complex valuations of companies or share prices. When faced with such tasks the Department examines the economic models underlying the valuations, the degree of disclosure of facts, the assumptions adopted for the purpose of the valuation and the reasonableness thereof. It is constantly on guard to ensure fair disclosure.
The Department, works closely with the Authority 's Legal Advisor to provide support for legislative procedures and initiates. In addition the department is involved in providing support for civil proceedings to which the Authority is a party.
The Department also represents the ISA before the Israeli Accounting Standards Board, articulating the ISA's position on a variety of accounting issues including standardization.
As part of its service to the reporting community, the Department allows reporting bodies and their accountants and lawyers to contact it, within a supervised framework, on matters relating to reporting in order to ascertain the position of the Department’s staff before the accountant and/or lawyer submits the formal report to the ISA.