INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS BOARD

International Accounting Standards Board

International Accounting Standards Board

Introduction

The heart and core of this paper is to critically analyze and compare and contrast the two provided articles about the International Accounting Standards Boar. The first article is written by a well renowned professor in this field Geoffrey Whittington who is professor in University of Cambridge. The second article is also written by a well renowned professor Stephen Zeff. He is an expert in the field of accounting.

The first article by Geoffrey Whittington which is “Harmonisation or discord? The critical role of the IASB conceptual framework review” critically analyse the framework of IASB and its working procedures.

On the other hand second article from Stephen Zeff “Political Lobbying on Proposed Standards: A Challenge to the IASB” is to analyse the politics around the IASB's proposed standards. Author claims that this pure educational and professional institute is surrounded by politics all around.

First Article: Political Influence of US on IASB

The International Accounting Standards Board has a mandate to produce a single set of high quality, understandable, and enforceable global accounting standards and to encourage convergence on these standards. To achieve its goals, the Board works closely with national standard setters around the world. The Financial Accounting Standards Board in the US. is one of its most important partners.

Recently, increasing pressure from the international financial markets has led to major restructuring of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), an organization that has been setting International Accounting Standards (IAS) for nearly 30 years. The Committee was restructured in 2001 into the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), a highly professional organization supported by industry and governments around the world. The IASB was modeled after the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the U.S., and created with a mandate to produce a single set of high quality, understandable, and enforceable International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and to encourage convergence on these standards.

To achieve its goal of convergence, the IASB works closely with national standard setters around the world. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is one of the IASB's most important partners. In face of the recent financial reporting crisis in the U.S., FASB has realized that it does not have all the answers to all of the accounting issues. There are some areas of U.S. standards that could be improved, where international standards seem to be more principles-based and more easily applied. Therefore, the FASB has become a proponent of improved international standards, and of a single set of standards to be used internationally and domestically. In its own report, "IAS Setting: A Vision for the Future," the FASB even suggests that the Board entertains the possibility that it may not be needed in the long run.

In the Memorandum of Understanding called 'The Norwalk Agreement," issued at their joint meeting in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 18, 2002, both the FASB and IASB pledged to use their best efforts to make their existing financial reporting standards fully compatible as soon as ...