What’s New: In Brief (October 19, 2009)

Craig Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law, has joined Toronto’s Thomas Gold Pettingill LLP as counsel in the areas of insurance policy interpretation and tort law.
Brown has written four books on insurance law. He co-authored Insurance Law in Canada with TGP’s Tom Donnelly.
He has served as a consultant to government, industry associations and lawyers on matters related to insurance law, and acts as an arbitrator in insurance matters.
He has been on the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario since 1977.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) intends to review its capital treatment of computer software intangibles.
In a recent advisory, OSFI says that intangible computer software assets under s. 3064 of the CICA Handbook are similar to property, plant and equipment, as they are tools used to operate the business and are not capitalized future revenues.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is reviewing the treatment of all intangibles for capital purposes.
“Future changes to the capital treatment of computer software intangibles may result from this review,” the advisory says.