23 May 2002

IAS19 to converge on FRS 17?

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Mary Keegan, Chair of the UK Accountancy Standards Board, said that convergence of international accountancy standards did not always mean convergence with US GAAP and that she had “high hopes” that the pensions standard would involve convergence on the UK, at a seminar on Tuesday.

In a forthright address to the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Keegan attacked the United States and the European Union in equal measure. She suggested the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) had too high a ratio of North Americans and was critical of the US “rules-based” approach. But she was also critical of the EU, arguing that the requirement for all EU listed companies to use IASB standards for group accounts by 2005 created tension with the overall process of a 5,6 or 7-year international convergence timetable. She said that, because of this pressure, the 2005 date might not be helpful in the end, though she argued the date has been helpful to the standard of financial reporting in Europe.

Keegan said most current international standards were “less than robust” and did not match up to UK standards and predicted that ”almost all the existing international standards will change in the next few years.”

Paul Cherry, Chair of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board, responded that Canada’s first priority was convergence with the US, ahead of international considerations. In a swipe at the United States he said that for the US, “harmonisation was fine, as long as the answer was theirs.” Cherry argued that the distinction frequently made between the European “principles-based” approach and the US “rules-based” approach was overly simplistic. He said US standards were already based on strong principles, and everyone would need to move beyond principles. However, he agreed that there was incessant detail in some of the US standards.

© Graham Bishop