The International Federation of Accountants has called on governments and regulators around the world to speed up their adoption of global accounting and auditing standards.
After a summit of IFAC members in London the organization’s president, Robert Bunting, said it was “crucial” that national standard-setters establish roadmaps for the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards and International Standards on Auditing.
More than 100 countries around the world now use IFRS, including all European Union members, but moves to adopt them in the United States have stalled under new Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Schapiro. She has not yet endorsed a plan for IFRS adoption proposed by her predecessor, Christopher Cox.
The IFAC call to speed things up came after a summit convened to plan for the September G-20 meeting, to be held in Pittsburgh. At their last meeting, held in London this April, world leaders agreed to a set of broad brush reforms aimed at fixing problems exposed by the financial crisis. The IFAC summit was held so that the accounting profession could agree a series of recommendations on the detail of reform.
In a statement, IFAC said its members had “unanimously agreed that the public interest would best be served by a single set of high-quality, principles-based financial reporting and auditing standards for listed and public interest entities.”
But it also warned that there had to be “balanced views in the standard-setting process” to ensure there is “no undue influence from any one stakeholder group”. That’s a reference to the intense pressure that some European politicians have directed at the International Accounting Standards Board in recent months.
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