Effects of the Global Financial Crisis on the International Accounting Standards

As the responsibilities of the global harmonization of accounting standards IFRS and GAAP transfer to IASB, FASB’s influence is waning. Advantages of the convergence include high quality financial reporting, which lowers cost of capital for investors and the cost of borrowing for companies. However, there are disadvantages to be noted, such as the costs of introducing IFRS to current and potential accountants and the risk of reducing the uniformity of financial reports due to the lax rulings of IFRS, which promotes earnings management amongst companies. Although arguments regarding the convergence remain prevalent, the completion of IFRS and GAAP is inevitable. Come year 2015, accountants, investors, and companies alike will discover whether or not the pros outweighed the cons; or vice versa.

In 1973 the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was established to set the financial accounting standards in the United States of America for nongovernmental entities. These standards are collectively called U.S. Generally accepted Accounting Principles, or U.S. GAAP. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants acknowledge the authority of these standards (FASB, n.d). A “proven, independent due process” is used to collect the viewpoints of the financial statements prepares and users for the constant improvement of these standards. An Accounting Status Update(ASU) is not an authoritative source however documents the amendments to communicate the changes in the FASB Codification for a user to understand the reason and future of those changes (FASB, n.d).

Even if uniformity were to be reached, the IOSCO disclosure standards do not encircle all of the information required of an easy access to cross-border capital markets.

The field of accounting is constantly evolving. This is true not only for the theory of accounting itself but also the entities that govern its theory and practice. Presently, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) are faced with some of the biggest challenges to date. To understand the significance of these two boards, it is necessary to understand their histories, relations between the boards, and the standards that they set. Also how the knowledge of these boards and the field they lead, gained through the masters of science in accountancy

Since 2002, Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) have been working toward “convergence” of US General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). They have made significant progress in efforts to converge critical accounting standards such as those dealing with revenue recognition, financial instruments and leases. Once these projects are complete, the "era" of convergence will be at an end. Nevertheless, the benefits for investors of eventually getting to consistently applied, high-quality, globally accepted accounting

In our presentation, we want to discuss how fair value accounting affects society in businesses. One example of how this effected society as a whole was the 2008 financial crisis. In this financial crisis, many companies were impacted but in particular AID insurance company faced a 11 billion dollar write down of debt before FASB introduced their new guidelines of SFAS 157. If this happened after these guidelines were passed, this company would have had a loss more like 900 million dollars. As a result, a company with trillion dollars of assets reported unrealized losses of tens of billions. Another area that was impacted was the American Banking

The convergence of two accounting systems, the US GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards, is not a new concept. For many years, the primordial idea of convergence started in the late 1950’s in response to post World War II economic integration and related increases in cross-border capital flows. Initially, the term used was “Harmonization until the early 1990’s the politically correct term is “Convergence”.

A joint convergence committee created the members of (FASB) and (IASB). (IASB) is recognized as an independent accounting standard-setting body that is similar to (FASB) that joins (GAAP), and is governed by the (IFRS) foundation. Due to this convergence, (AICPA) believes U.S. adoption of a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards will benefit U.S. financial markets and public companies by enabling preparation of transparent and comparable financial reports throughout the world, (American Institute of CPAs, 2016). Secondly, (AICPA) is dedicated to supplying the whole accounting profession with information, tools and IFRS.com for instance to assimilate as well as implement a new set of standards. As the (AICPA) supports continual convergence of reliable accounting standards between (IFRS) and (GAAP) the mission of completion between (IASB) and (FASB) is prolonged. (AICPA) will always support funding mechanisms of the body-making

The definition of fair value market value is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and willing seller, neither being under compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of all relevant facts.

Fair value is defined as the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date.

This difference is also tied to the movement of globalization by way of the internal customs from around the world. Based on these practices the account standards around the world are created from a different basis. In the U.S, accounting standards are based on “bright lined rules.” Whereas, in most of the world accounting standards are based off of principles, with the emphasis on principles the international rules focus on the heart of the law. Rather than in the U.S these “bright lined rules” have been created as a result of the multitude of industries located here. The rules however, do not reflect the heart of the law; rather they create a line to be maintained.

Historically ,it is seen that there are numerous number of disputes in the field of financial reporting among different professionals, regulators and theoretitions .most of these disputes are related to the valuation of financial reporting components.the current curve in the progress of valuation is the push for and against the fair value approach.the purpose of this research is to examine the arguments on the use of fair value accounting and to identify the issues related to implementation of fair value accounting standards. Further, the results of literature related to role of fair value accounting within financial crisis are also investigated.

The current financial crisis was triggered by subprime mortgage in the United States. This lead not only to a large amount of mortgage default but also other problem suc as, credit card and store loans. The result was huge losses in financial institution in the United States Europe and Asia, because of financial liberalization had enabled the transnational transaction of “bad” assets. Some people argue that this crisis was aggravated by Fair Value Accounting because it prices an asset based on its current value. Which means, the financial institution show the current prices of their asset in financial statement. In this crisis, almost all of assets values are decreased, then people have less confidence about the financial

From 1904, some people suggest that we need a uniform accounting standard in the world. After the work hard in more than half century, in 1973, international accounting standard committee has been found. Although this is a non-government organization, they set up accounting standard for all the country, which is convenient to international trade, comparison, and analysis. With the increase of recognition, there are more countries used it, but many organizations and people disagreed the standard. This essay will focus on the different attitude of initial recognition methods of International Accounting Standard 16: Property, Plant, and Equipment and discuss the advantage and disadvantage of methods and influence the reason why IAS will allow

Global accounting standard setter joined hands to work in a coordinated manner to achieve the goal of creation of single set of accounting standards. Thus, IASB and FASB in response to the issues arisen due to the financial crisis started development of new set of standards. They decided to replace IAS 39 by and built and sub divided the project into three phases: