G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors continue to call for convergence
20 Apr 2013
The communiqué from meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors held in Washington on 18-19 April 2013 reiterates the call for the finalisation of the joint IASB and FASB projects.
The participants discussed traditional G20 agenda, such as the global economy outlook and the efforts in connection with the international financial architecture reform as well as progress regarding the financial regulation agenda. The final communiqué contains the usual sentence urging convergence:
We reiterate our call on the IASB and FASB to finalize by the end of 2013 their work on key outstanding projects for achieving a single set of high-quality standards.
The meeting received a progress report from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) which followed on from a letter sent to the participants ahead of the meeting. Regarding the progress report the FSR press release on the meeting notes:
[The participants] noted the progress in implementation of OTC regulatory reforms and committed to complete the remaining legislative and regulatory frameworks for these reforms.
A direct result of implementing these reforms is also the ED/2013/2 Novation of Derivatives and Continuation of Hedge Accounting published by the IASB in February 2013. The exposure draft proposes changes to IAS 39 and the forthcoming hedge accounting chapter of IFRS 9 to permit the continuation of hedge accounting where hedging instruments are novated to a central counterparty in accordance with laws or regulations introduced by jurisdictions to implement the G20's agreed reforms around over the counter (OTC) derivatives. In Europe, this concernes the Regulation on OTC derivatives, central counterparties and trade repositories (also called European Market Infrastructure Regulation - EMIR).
The following documents in connection with the meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors are available:
- G20 website:
- FSB website: