The Wall Street Journal reports that the SEC staff will have a report in a few weeks addressing adoption of IFRS for the US. The report won’t have a recommendation on whether or how to make the switch.
The expectation is a final decision has been pushed off until at least 2013.
The article is Delay Seen (Again) for New Rules on Accounting, by Michael Rapoport.
For more detail that will actually tell the story better for us accountants, check out Tom Selling’s post, What the Chief Accountant’s Resignation Means for the Future of IFRS in the U.S., posted two days before the above article from the Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Selling provides lots of inside-baseball details on the resignation of the chief accountant. His imminent departure will obviously slow down any recommendations. Seems obvious there won’t be any implementation decision with that office vacant.
You have to see Dr. Selling’s post for all of the background.
His read on how this will play out is that the EU will give up on convergence before the SEC. They will call a halt before the SEC gets around to pulling the plug.
The opportunity cost has been high. Tom Selling point out some of the cost:
(1) convergence with IFRS has squandered momentum from the financial crisis of 2008 to close the loopholes that banks have exploited for years to hide immense risks and losses; and (2) has relegated to the dustbin too many good ideas that emanated from the FASB’s own deliberations, which were summarily rejected by the EU and the IASB.
In my opinion, it would be better to let go of IFRS convergence on the basis that it is a really bad idea for the U.S. If we avoid IFRS because of perpetual delays, that works too.
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