Despite the fact that little attention has recently been paid to merging U.S. and international accounting standards, officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission say the project has not been scrapped.
While they claim that the weak economy of the last year may have led the project to take a temporary back seat, it has also demonstrated why merging accounting standards is necessary.
According to an article published by CFO.com, James Kroeker, the SEC’s chief accountant, says that the highly-publicized roadmap for merging U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Practices with International Financial Reporting Standards is alive and well.
The roadmap was first unveiled by former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. When current Chairmen Mary Shapiro took over the job, the project was put on an informal hiatus while the organization concentrated on fighting the credit crunch.
There has been little movement on the project since the public comment period ended on April 20, 2009. The CFO.com article states that during that comment period, half of the comments came from corporations, with 30 percent of those listed on the Fortune 100. These numbers illustrate that there is interest, both positive and negative, about the proposal.
Kroeker believes that the financial crisis has underscored the need for merging domestic and international accounting standards because much of the SEC discussions during the credit crunch had an international scale. Many of the discussions included debates about international banking regulation and corporate governance.
