Paul Beswick, the deputy chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission who coined the phrase “condorsement” to suggest a possible U.S. path toward international accounting standards, has been appointed acting chief accountant at the SEC.

Beswick will replace James Kroeker, who resigned as chief accountant last week to return to private practice. As deputy chief accountant, Beswick was the staff director responsible for the study launched in February 2010 to produce a work plan that would help the SEC determine whether, when and how to move the United States into International Financial Reporting Standards. Kroeker departed after delivering the staff's final report on the work plan, which offered a long list of reasons the SEC should be cautious about adopting IFRS.

In late 2010, Beswick outlined a possible approach to adopting IFRS that he called “condorsement,” or convergence and endorsement. He envisioned a continued process of converging U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles with IFRS while also endorsing individual standards within IFRS as they are deemed fit for use in the United States. The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are already on a path to converge major standards, such as revenue recognition, leasing, and financial instruments. Under Beswick's vision, FASB would be charged with continued revisions to GAAP to bring it as close to IFRS as possible. One of the SEC staff's earlier reports in the work plan described such an approach in greater detail.

The work plan also led to reports on how consistently IFRS is applied in countries where it is followed, and where there are still significant differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS. The final SEC staff report on the IFRS work plan outlines a number of obstacles to U.S. adoption of IFRS, including concerns about how the SEC would fulfill its charge to protect U.S. investors as well as governance and funding concerns related to how international standards are set. 

As acting chief accountant, Beswick will be in charge of international accounting matters, accounting interpretations, and professional practice issues. In his most recent role as deputy chief accountant, he was responsible for day-to-day operations of the accounting group, including resolution of accounting practice issues, rulemaking, and oversight of private sector standard-setting efforts.