SEC Chairman Cox discusses IFRS issues

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13 Oct 2007

In his keynote address to the 2007 US-EU Corporate Governance Conference in Washington earlier this week, US SEC Chairman Christopher Cox discussed a range of issues including accounting convergence and potential SEC recognition of IFRSs.

Here is an excerpt from his remarks. Click to  Download Chairman Cox's Remarks (PDF 65k).

The International Accounting Standards Board and the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board have for years been working on a convergence project to eliminate needless regulatory friction between International Financial Reporting Standards and U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. And that has made possible the SEC's announcement that we are taking the next steps on our Roadmap to eliminate the reconciliation requirement in the United States, and that we are even considering allowing U.S. issuers to use IFRS....

IFRS promises to integrate our markets. But that promise is jeopardized if IFRS isn't applied faithfully and consistently across jurisdictions. Regulators must beware the impulse to develop nationally-tailored versions of IFRS, and we must cooperate with one another in implementing a set of standards that is faithfully and consistently applied.

Since 2005, the SEC has been following a publicly announced 'Roadmap' that charts a path to when issuers would no longer be required to reconcile their IFRS financials statements to U.S. GAAP. We're well down the path charted in the 'Roadmap', and we're still very much on track to eliminating the reconciliation requirement by 2009.

 

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