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Roundtable on Accounting Standards "Roadmap" Planned

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox announced that on March 6, 2007, senior SEC staff members from the Office of the Chief Accountant, the Division of Corporation Finance and the Office of International Affairs will hold a roundtable discussion on the "roadmap" regarding International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The roadmap, first described in April 2005 by SEC Chief Accountant Donald Nicolaisen, was explicitly affirmed by Chairman Cox in February 2006.

The roadmap describes the path toward eliminating the need for non-US companies to reconcile to U.S. GAAP financial statements they prepare pursuant to IFRS issued by the International Accounting Standards Board in filings with the Commission. In the United States, foreign private issuers are already filing using IFRS, although they must reconcile the results with U.S. GAAP.

"Nearly 100 countries currently use, or have a policy of convergence with, IFRS," said Chairman Cox, "including the European Union, where IFRS reporting has been mandatory since 2005." He added that "eliminating the current reconciliation requirement, and paving the way for the use of both systems in the United States, remains the objective of the roadmap".

Conrad Hewitt, the SEC's Chief Accountant, and John W. White, Director of Corporation Finance, plan to moderate the roundtable, which will consist of three panels organized to address each of the following issues with respect to the roadmap, 1) the effect on the capital raising process in the U.S. capital markets, 2) the effect on issuers in the U.S. capital markets and 3) the effect on investors in the U.S. capital markets. "I am pleased we are able to conduct this roundtable as a step in obtaining US market participants' input on the potential effects of a co-existence of the IFRS and U.S. GAAP models in the U.S. capital markets," remarked Mr. Hewitt.

The roundtable will be held in the auditorium at the Commission's headquarters at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. The event will be open to the public.