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Kuwait’s companies have four months before IFRS 18 takes effect, and the new standard makes some of the numbers used in press releases and investor presentations a finance, governance and communications problem at the same time.
The countdown to 1 January 2027 is unusually consequential for Kuwait’s listed companies, licensed persons and collective investment scheme managers. In June, the Capital Markets Authority instructed entities under its jurisdiction to conduct gap analyses, update internal information systems and charts of accounts, train relevant staff and prepare comparative figures for retrospective application. Circular No. 9 of 2026 described IFRS 18 as a step toward better comparability, disclosure quality, transparency and investor protection. The regulator’s instructions make clear that this is more than a request to redesign an income statement.
What makes the implementation unusual is where the accounting boundary now reaches. IFRS 18 introduces disclosure requirements for management-defined performance measures, or MPMs, when qualifying subtotals used outside the financial statements communicate management’s view of financial performance. The IFRS Foundation specifically includes management commentary, press releases and investor presentations within the relevant definition of public communications. Once a measure qualifies, the reporting consequence follows it into the financial statements.
The press release now matters differently
Finance teams have traditionally owned statutory reporting while investor relations, executive offices and communications teams shaped the narrative around it. IFRS 18 narrows that separation. An adjusted performance figure used in a public investor presentation can become more than presentation language if it meets the MPM definition. The company then needs a controlled explanation of what the measure represents and how it relates to IFRS-defined performance.
The timing is significant because the practical perimeter is still being tested. In June 2026, the IFRS Interpretations Committee considered whether presentations distributed confidentially to a small number of identifiable investors counted as public communications. In the fact pattern before it, the committee tentatively concluded they did not, while emphasising the judgement involved. The June IFRIC discussion shows why implementation is not reducible to ledger mappings. Companies need to know which measures leave the organisation, through which channel, for which audience and under whose approval.
When communications becomes part of the control map
That is what makes a recent intervention from KPMG in Kuwait’s Head of Corporate Communications, Shashi Shankar Ghosh, useful. His remit spans corporate reporting, media relations, strategic and leadership communications, branding, social media and crisis communications, according to his KPMG profile. He sits close to the point where accounting output becomes corporate narrative.
Writing on LinkedIn on 30 August about KPMG’s collaboration with the Union of Investment Companies, Ghosh put the issue plainly: IFRS 18 is “not a finance team issue.” He argued that the standard requires decision-making at firm level, a distinction that matters when companies must decide who owns performance definitions, who approves them and whether the same measure remains consistent between the accounts, the investor deck and the press release. His post framed the forthcoming UIC session specifically around the impact of the new requirements on Kuwait’s investment companies and their boards.
The urgency in his post was equally pointed. Ghosh said organisations should consider “speaking to an expert in the field at the earliest.” In context, that is less a consultancy slogan than an implementation warning. The CMA has already told firms that IFRS 18 requires retrospective comparative information, meaning part of the evidence needed for a clean 2027 transition belongs to periods that have already happened. At the same time, the MPM provisions require companies to understand how management has been explaining performance outside the financial statements. Waiting until the year-end reporting cycle risks discovering too late that definitions, systems and communications practices were never aligned.
One boundary still matters
There is an important limit. Social-media posts themselves are expressly excluded from the IFRS 18 definition of public communications used to identify MPMs, alongside oral communications and written transcripts of oral communications. Ghosh’s LinkedIn post therefore does not itself create an MPM disclosure obligation. The distinction matters because it shows how precise the new control map must be. IFRS 18 does not pull every corporate utterance into accounting. It makes certain established channels of financial communication materially more consequential.
For Kuwait boards, the practical question before January is therefore not simply whether finance can produce an IFRS 18-compliant statement. It is whether finance knows what investor relations is publishing, whether communications understands when a performance measure creates accounting consequences, and whether governance functions can keep definitions consistent across releases, presentations and annual reporting. Ghosh’s intervention puts the issue at the right organisational level: the standard may enter through finance, but readiness now depends on the firm around it.
