The last ten years haven't gone exactly the way the bookworms at the FASB wanted. The Norwalk Agreement, signed in 2002, was supposed to be the first step in resolving the differences between international financial reporting standards and Almighty U.S. GAAP. Alas, despite a lot of agreeing, disagreeing, and agreeing to disagree we've ended up with jack squat. But that doesn't mean out-going FASB Chair Leslie Seidman is disappointed. Nope! Despite those people who think that the last decade has been a complete and utter waste of time, Les "characterized the 10-year convergence effort as a success," and promises to stay the veered-off course:
“Even though we do expect our relationship with the IASB to change from the bilateral sort of partnership arrangement that we’ve had in recent years, that does not mean that convergence is over or that divergence is going to start to occur,” she said. “In the early days of our relationship, we had what I would call a ‘best efforts’ approach and we accomplished a lot. It seems to me that going forward we can continue to achieve a lot even if the nature and structure of our relationship changes. We plan to continue to work cooperatively with the IASB and other standard-setters around the world to continue to improve our standards here in the U.S., as well as global accounting standards, and make them more comparable.”
What a relief.
FASB Chair Seidman Looks Ahead to New IASB Relationship [AT]
