Finally, also over lunch, the Council is expected to have a first discussion on the current funding arrangements of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Continuation of the current system of funding after 2007, relying on only a small number of voluntary contributions, is believed not to be sustainable in the light of increasing global application. This would not enable the international standard setting body to be independent and sufficiently resourced to conduct its work in a timely fashion. Therefore, a new system is needed with a proper allocation between geographical areas. Commissioner McCreevy is expected to outline that a clear political signal to the IASB and the outside world, via a Declaration at the level of the Ecofin Council, appears the most appropriate means to contribute to the implementation of a reasonable and workable solution in the short term. In such a Declaration, a strong message should be included on the longer-term objective to improve IASB's governance by further developing its approach to consultation, feedback and due process.

20-23 June 2006, London

Tuesday 20 June 2006 (afternoon only)

• Financial Instruments
• Amendments to IAS 37

• Accounting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities - review of a revised draft ED

• IFRIC Update, including:
  • D18 Interim Reporting and Impairment
  • IAS 32 Financial Instruments: Presentation - Classification of a Financial Instrument as Liability or Equity
• Fair Value Measurement
• Conceptual Framework
• Insurance Contracts - Phase 2 [Education Session]

• Earnings per Share
• ASB project on pensions accounting [Education Session]
• Technical Plan

I firmly believe that high quality standards in the areas of audit, ethics and education for the accounting profession can be instrumental in the re-establishment of confidence in the audit process and in promoting the integrity of firms and markets. I also believe that high quality standards, if and when uniformly applied, create an international 'public good' that represents a very important part of the governance arrangements for our world financial system. That the standards are also being formulated in the broad public interest is a further safeguard that these arrangements will foster stability and development around the world.

And the numbers the investor sees using interactive data will be vastly more accurate than they have been up to this point. Most people think that the numbers analysts and investment professionals work with come directly from SEC filings. Even some CEOs think this. But it's not true. An entire industry has developed to extract information in the financial statements that companies file with us. The error rate from this process is unacceptably high. According to one study, for example, computers taking down data from the SEC website get the numbers right only 72% of the time. People must then manually check every one of these hundreds of items in every company's financial statements to get that 28% that was not captured correctly. This is time consuming and, because human fingers are involved, error prone. Even after the human extraction has taken place, the error rate can range between 5% and 20%. With all of the advancements we have today, and with all of the money we spend on making sure that companies put out accurate numbers, why do we allow this low-tech approach to continue unabated?

Edgar Online, a Connecticut company whose business it is to extract information from our SEC filings and resell it to users downstream, has given us an idea of what the future could be like. They have embraced interactive data, and have already tagged more than 10,000 companies' statements - including all the 10Ks, and all the 10Qs - going back several years. Edgar Online says that, thanks to XBRL, it has attained a greater than 99% accuracy rate.

Imagine retail investors having access to better numbers than professional analysts ever dreamed of, and imagine combining this accuracy with the power to mix and match, and to compare and analyze those numbers.

There are concerns on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which seem to result in EU issuers seeking listings in non EU exchanges or in the "unregulated" EU markets in order to avoid the application of IFRS. The same applies to non-EU issuers, who are facing uncertainty on whether and when the European Commission is going to consider US, Canadian, and Japanese GAAP equivalent for the purposes of the Transparency Directive.