8.1 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). At this Annual Conference IOSCO has taken the opportunity to reiterate its support for the work of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and encourages its members to accept financial statements in fillings for cross-border offerings prepared under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), with additional reconciliation or disclosure as necessary to meet national standards. In addition, IOSCO has encouraged those members still using supplemental treatments to continue to evaluate their need with the hope that within the foreseeable future, such reconciliation treatments will no longer be necessary.

IOSCO is also developing procedures to encourage cooperation and consultation among members in the regulatory interpretation and enforcement of IFRS. A consultation paper outlining the options with this approach as well as the principles to be adopted and their implementation has been distributed to the IOSCO membership. IOSCO envisages that it will be in a position to confirm a final model during the second half of 2005, in time to be used in conjunction with reviews of 2005 annual financial statements.

8.2 Regulation and Oversight of Auditors. In response to the widespread interest in the conduct and quality of audits and in oversight of auditors, IOSCO recently conducted a survey on the regulation and oversight of auditors in a number of different jurisdictions. The survey revealed that IOSCO principles for auditor oversight and auditor independence were broadly implemented in most of the developed markets and some of the emerging markets even though there remained wide variations in the approaches and structures that are applied. IOSCO is currently in the process of analyzing the survey results and considering possible revisions to the related IOSCO regulatory principles.