Back in November the IASB came up with the idea to start a new cool club called the Accounting Standards Advisory Forum. It was going to include 12 elite members of accounting rule wonkery that would be at the forefront of global financial reporting. There was one major to joining the ASAF, however, and that was that the dozen members would have to "sign up to promoting a single set of global standards – code for no lobbying for national carve-outs – and respect the IASB's independence."
The "single set of global standards" was commonly understood to be IFRS, but after hearing from interested parties that weren't necessarily hip to the idea, the IASB had a change of heart about that position, explaining that all the dozen members had to do was "agree to support and contribute to the foundation in its mission to develop a single set of high-quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted financial reporting standards." Standards that were, presumably, to be named later. "New IFRS" or IFRS Zero" or something.
But now, here we are, about three weeks later and the IASB has gone full on desperate, handing the U.S. a seat on the new ASAF:
IASB Chairman Hans Hoogervorst said on Monday membership rules will be changed by the time the new panel holds its first meeting in April so the world's biggest capital market can join. Michel Prada, chairman of the IASB's trustees, who will select panel members, said: "We very much hope our U.S. friends will join. We obviously need their contribution."
Oh? No more of this "It is also becoming more difficult to justify the representation of jurisdictions not applying IFRS in the IASB governance framework" talk?
"Now we are in a sort of situation people are waiting and wondering what's next," Prada said. "The message we have to convey to our U.S. counterparts is that they have to help us get out of this situation and find a new way forward."
Well then. Maybe they'll think about it.
“The simple truth is that when you have two independent, highly competent boards, sometimes they will agree with each other, and other times they will not,” he said. “It’s not that one is right and the other wrong; they just reach different conclusions. The same would be true if I were to split my board in two and ask them to consider 10 projects. I doubt each smaller board would reach identical conclusions on all 10 projects, so convergence would require compromises to be made. Convergence therefore does not always result in the highest quality outcome. It has served its purpose, but now it is time to move on. [
Merging the iconic New York Stock Exchange with Germany’s Deutsche Boerse AG will force European companies to switch to using U.S. accounting rules which have superior disclosures, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Friday.” This will force a common set of accounting standards on the world; the American disclosures are better,” Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show, though he admitted U.S. rules did not prevent Bernard Madoff from swindling billions of dollars through a Ponzi scheme. [