Attitudes harden over IFRS adoption

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IASB member John Smith is reported to have said at a recent conference:

“If it [US] doesn’t adopt,” he warned, the United States “will be the outlier and those countries already adopting and committing themselves to IFRSs will not accept a situation where the United States remains outside the system indefinitely, yet has a seat at the table.”

This is good news and comes as at least some practitioners are realizing that the US will need EU experienced personnel to make the transition:

Mark Allison, executive director, education at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) and chairman of the International Accounting Education Standards Board, said there are opportunities for UK firms to provide expertise to the US as they share a common language and culture. It is providing help to its sister body in the US to prepare IFRS exam papers.

BDO Stoy Hayward is sending Gary Drennan, director of business assurance, from its Glasgow office to lead its push on IFRS in North America. He will be based in Chicago and will recruit a team to work with him. BDO hopes to win IFRS-transfer business off the Big Four accountancy firms, as businesses will not be allowed to use their auditors for the transition.

You can be sure this will be a topic of discussion when I catch up with Jeremy Newman later this week.

Meanwhile in the US, scaremongerers continue to put the cost of transition forward as a reason for not going ahead or deferring IFRS adoption. That’s a brain dead argument if I ever heard one, especially as many companies already know what is involved from prior international experience.

It reminds me of the old joke: accountants know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

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Tagged as: BDO Stoy Hayward, IASB, IFRS