Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Scholarly Commons
Abstract
For many years there has been a dedicated group of practitioners, standard setters, business leaders and others from around the world who have worked to establish a single set of globally accepted accounting standards for the benefit of the capital markets. These people clearly had their hearts in the right place but, absent a binding mandate to apply the standards, it seemed largely a labor of love. Now I expect those pioneering initiatives and the many years of effort to pay off because in 2005 a large number of companies are joining what up to now has been a limited cadre who prepare their financial statements using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs). It is fortuitous that this comes at a time when the focus of capital market participants globally and domestically is on the need for high quality and consistently applied financial reporting. Thus, this expanded use of IFRSs provides a unique opportunity to provide investors and creditors around the world with the quality and consistency of financial reporting that they need, and should rightly expect
