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SEC Resists Pressure on IFRS Decision

SEC chair Mary Schapiro said that she will not be rushed to make a decision on International Financial Reporting Standards.

“I don’t feel pressure at all to go along with anybody,” she told Reuters at the Practicing Law Institute’s SEC Speaks conference on Friday. “I feel pressure to do the right thing for U.S. markets and U.S. investors.”

However, the SEC has recently given encouraging signs that it will ultimately allow IFRS to be incorporated into the U.S. financial reporting system, even though it has pushed back the decision. SEC chief accountant James Kroeker said earlier this month that he was hopeful his staff could put forward a model for doing just that (see U.S. Official “Optimistic” on Global Accounting Move). Hans Hoogervorst, the chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, was sufficiently encouraged by Kroeker’s statement to call it “confidence boosting.”

However, European regulators appear to be running out of patience with the long U.S. delay. European Commission internal markets commissioner Michel Barnier reportedly told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last Thursday. “European patience has its limits, and we are not far from reaching that limit. We hope that the United States will apply these standards.”

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