At the October meeting of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), the European Commission explained that it has been decided that more extensive work on the costs and benefits of Standards and Interpretations needs to be carried out in future. The IASB has apparently agreed to carry out such work when developing proposals for new Standards and Interpretations, but that commitment will not cover projects already well-advanced and material issued but not yet endorsed. The European Commission is therefore as a result discussing with EFRAG the need for some form of cost-benefit study to be carried out as part of the endorsement process. Those discussions are ongoing but it is likely that EFRAG will be encouraged to extend the work it carries out in formulating its endorsement advice. This would be the case not only for Standards and Interpretations not yet issued, but also for those Standards and Interpretations on which EFRAG has not yet issued its final endorsement advice; in other words, IFRIC 13 Customer Loyalty Programmes, IFRIC 14 The Limit on a Defined Benefit Asset, Minimum Funding Requirements and their Interaction, and IAS 1 (Revised) Presentation of Financial Statements. It was noted that some further work would also need to be carried out, probably largely by the Commission, on the material on which EFRAG has already issued its endorsement advice: IFRIC 12 Service Concession Arrangements and IAS 23 (Revised) Borrowing Costs.

As a result, it was now unlikely that IFRICs 12-14, IAS 23 (Revised), and IAS 1 (Revised) will be endorsed before the end of 2007. EFRAG will continue to issue regular updates on the endorsement process on its website (www.efrag.org) in the form of Endorsement Status Reports [these are available on IAS Plus's EFRAG Page].

Click for October 2007 Edition of EFRAG Update.

Excerpts from AICPA testimony:

I want to state as directly as possible that the AICPA supports the goal of a single set of high-quality, comprehensive accounting standards to be used by public companies in the preparation of transparent and comparable financial reports throughout the world. The debate or question should no longer be whether we move to convergence of high quality accounting standards, but how soon we can accomplish convergence....

The AICPA supports the elimination of the US GAAP reconciliation for foreign private issuers using International Financial Reporting Standards....

The AICPA supports giving US issuers an option to prepare financial statements in accordance with IFRSs as published by the IASB for purposes of complying with the rules and regulations of the SEC. Giving US issuers such an IFRS option will be yet another important step towards achieving the larger goal of a single set of high quality, comprehensive accounting standards to be used by public companies in the preparation of transparent and comparable financial reports throughout the world.

An excerpt from Sir David's statement: The movement towards IFRSs is truly global and extends well beyond Europe's borders. More than 100 countries throughout the world – 108 according to the latest Deloitte IASPlus survey – require or permit the use of IFRSs. From our discussions with regulators and standardsetters, we expect this number to rise substantially within a relatively short time. As I said, the EU's adoption served as a catalyst. Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and South Africa all joined Europe as early adopters. The major emerging and transition economies of the world – Brazil, China, India, and Russia – are adopting or considering the adoption of IFRSs, not US GAAP, in an effort to become integrated in the world's capital markets and attract the investment necessary to finance their development. Similarly, Canada, Chile, Israel and Korea, economies with significant ties with the United States, have all recently announced their planned abandonment of national standards for IFRSs.