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IFRS: The Waiting is the Hardest Part
by Compliance Week (Subscription required for full article)
July 24, 2012
Tammy Whitehouse reports in Compliance Week that the SEC staff's final report on a work plan for adopting International Financial Reporting Standards, published on July 13, “gave a long list of concerns the Commission will need to consider before setting any date for IFRS adoption. It did not, however, say whether IFRS should be adopted at all, or how long of a transition period corporate filers should have.” Whitehouse went on to write that the persistent uncertainty strains companies as they wrestle with IT investment or employee training plans, says Cindy Fornelli, executive director for the Center for Audit Quality. “There is a lot of uncertainty that continues on into the system for all parties involved because we don't know what the SEC is going to recommend ultimately,” she says. If the SEC were to consider an adoption plan with a long lead time, that would at least alleviate uncertainty, Fornelli is quoted as saying. “If the uncertainty would go away, companies could start to plan.”
