From the annual reports of the year 2009, the adoption of the IAS 1 revised has required to show in the income statement the total comprehensive income, a performance measure that results adding to the traditional figure of profit or loss the unrealized gains and losses (particularly, fair value changes) that, previously, were directly placed in the net equity and weren’t part of net income. In this research authors want to investigate the impact of the new statement of comprehensive income on the firm performance representation, in Italy and France, by observing the amount and the volatility of this new measure, as well as its composition.
Keywords: IAS 1, performance, comprehensive income, financial statement presentation, statement of comprehensive income, volatility.