The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on Wednesday laid out its top areas of concern for the coming year, according to a FASB media advisory. These include: 

• pensions and other post-retirement employee benefit plans; 
• intangible assets; 
• distinguishing liabilities from equity, and 
• financial performance reporting. 

These four issues will be the subject of an Agenda Discussion Paper that the FASB said will be issued in the first half of 2016. FASB Chair Russell Golden said these priorities were selected through a survey of the FASB's various advisory groups, including the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, the Emerging Issues Task Force, and the Private Company Council. 

Golden said that the board also wants stakeholders to weigh in on what they think are other matters to be discussed and how they should be prioritized. 

"In other words," said Golden, "we want to know what important 'big-ticket' items you think we should--and shouldn't--consider in the future." 

In addition to the four issues to be listed in the discussion paper, the FASB advisory said that the board also added two more projects to the research agenda: consolidations, and inventory and costs of sales.