Brussels, 17/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - The “Big Four” (KPMG, Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu) and Grant Thornton and BDO Seidman auditors presented a joint document, on Tuesday 15 January in New York, in which they take a position in favour of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) at an international level. The heads of the most influential auditing consultancies in the world declared: “It is our view that the move towards global adoption of the IFRS as promulgated by the IASB must be continued, along with the global convergence of audit and independence standards”. They consider that the IFRS provide the advantage of being based on principles rather than on detailed rules.
This declaration by the auditing industry marks another step in the elaboration of a global accounting language. 109 countries are using or intend to use the IFRS. At a transatlantic level, work on convergence between the IFRS - compulsory in the EU, and US GAAP accounting standards made progress in 2007. Last November, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) removed the obligation of harmonisation on US GAAP rules for European quoted companies using the IFRS (EUROPE 9545). Commissioner McCreevy, in charge of the internal market, announced that he would be proposing that in 2008 the EU accepted financial statements published according to US GAAP standards by US companies quoted on EU stock exchanges (EUROPE 9553). The definitive acceptance of the IFRS as the exclusive international accounting standards is still stumbling on the issue of how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) operates and is funded. (M.B.)