FASB webcast on IFRS convergence:

• Title of Webcast: Towards a Global Reporting System: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?
• Date and Time: 8 January 2008, 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM US EST (15:30 to 16:30 GMT).
• Panelists: Robert Herz, Chairman of the FASB; Peter Bridgman, Senior Vice President and Controller of PepsiCo; Greg Jonas, Managing Director of Moody's Investors Service; and Sam Ranzilla, a Partner at KPMG LLC. Moderated by Wall Street Journal reporter David Reilly.
• Topic: The panel will cover topics that include steps necessary to ensure a successful transition to IFRS; how this transition will provide better information to investors; and progress made by the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to create a common set of high-quality global accounting standards.
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United States GAAP. CESR believes US GAAP and IFRS are converging and will continue to evolve on a combined basis to an extent where they are effectively equivalent to each other and would therefore recommend that the Commission finds US GAAP equivalent to IFRS for use on EU markets.

Japanese GAAP. CESR does not necessarily believe itself in a position to comment on the [Accounting Standards Board of Japan's work] programme but has no reason to doubt that the ASBJ may well be able to achieve this objective. It is clear that if the ASBJ is successful in achieving its objectives there is no reason that CESR should not agree to Japanese GAAP being considered equivalent as at that stage all the issues identified in its 2005 advice will have been addressed. Consequently, CESR would recommend that, come June 2008, the Commission should consider Japanese GAAP equivalent, unless there is no adequate evidence of the ASBJ achieving to timetable the objectives set out in the Tokyo Agreement.

Chinese GAAP. CESR would recommend that the Commission postpones a final decision on Chinese GAAP until there is more information on the issues outlined above [essentially, assessment of implementation of new Chinese standards in 2007], because CESR believes that evidence of adequate implementation is important in the context of an outcome-based definition of equivalence.