The U.K.’s financial reporting watchdog has warned companies to improve the way they implement a new accounting standard on segmental reporting.

The Financial Reporting Review Panel said it has told “a number of companies” to provide additional disclosures after checking how they had complied with IFRS 8, “Operating Segments.”

IFRS 8 tells companies to give an analysis of their profit, assets, and liabilities broken down into operating segments. The new standard was introduced at the start of 2009 to make it harder for companies to hide the fact that parts of their business were performing badly.

The panel, which is part of the Financial Reporting Council, said it was concerned at the way companies were adopting IFRS 8 after looking at a sample of interim and annual accounts.

The panel said it had found four reporting trends that it wasn’t happy about. It said some companies:

Reported only one operating segment, even though the group had diverse business interests or significant operations in different countries.

Published narrative reports that used a different operating analysis to that used in the financial statements.

Had directors or top managers with titles and responsibilities that implied an organizational structure that was not reflected in the operating segments.

Used non-IFRS measures in their narrative reports and IFRS-compliant segmental disclosures in their financial statements.

Panel chairman Bill Knight accepted that implementation of IFRS 8 was “a challenge,” but added, “It is also an opportunity to communicate better.”