Chief Accountant of the SEC believes former SEC Chairman's call for burying IFRS was "premature"
Jun 08, 2015
On June 5, 2015, at a financial reporting conference in California, Jim Schnurr, Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed that the SEC does not intend to bury the objective of a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards.
Mr. Schnurr stated that there is continued support for a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards.
In my opinion, in the near term, FASB and IASB should continue to focus on converging the standards. The boards should renew their commitment to cooperate and develop standards that eliminate differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP whenever it meets the needs of its constituents and improves the quality of financial reporting. I recognize the boards will not always be able to eliminate differences during the standard-setting process, primarily because they serve different constituents that have different needs. However, when differences in standards arise, the boards should monitor the implementation of those standards with the objective of learning from the implementation and re-engaging with each other with the goal of converging to the standard with the highest quality financial reporting outcome.
Please click to access the full text of Mr Schnurr's speech on the SEC website. All conference materials are available on the conference Web site.