Strasbourg, 07/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is urging the United States to speed up the convergence of their accountancy rules with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that apply in many countries around the world and also apply in the European Union. Speaking last week at the Brookings Institute in Washington, Barnier said he was sure that the United States would meet their promise of moving towards convergence in financial reporting. He pointed out that the issue had been on the negotiating table for a long time but Europe's patience would not last eternally. The United States, he said, should decide by the end of this year whether they were going to include the IFRS in their accountancy rules.
The Commissioner made criticisms of the US rules which are not binding when it comes to limits on pay and bonuses in banking. He said the EU was the only body to have introduced binding restrictions on bonuses, but hoped that other countries would follow suit to ensure that bankers are not encouraged to take risks to earn greater bonuses. Talking about managing banks going under, Barnier said that banks should be allowed to go bankrupt, irrespective of size and said that special EU legislation would be unveiled to this effect after the summer break. The commissioner called for the introduction of fair rules on either side of the Atlantic when transposing the Basel Committee's Basel III agreement to increase bank capital requirements.
Barnier had no revelations to make about postponing publication of the results of the EU bank stress tests, saying he was absolutely certain that the figures were reliable and comparable (among banks and member states), according to Reuters. He said that the current stress tests were qualitative rather than quantitative because the EU was closely scrutinising banks that only scrape through the tests. Last week, the European Banking Authority asked for further information from the banks it had tested. The stress test results are scheduled for publication in early summer. (M.B./transl.fl)