QUICK ANSWER 2

While some countries/companies feel that the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP) is the “gold standard” of financial reporting, more than have the countries in the world have already adapted to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), or plan to adapt.

There are a number of advantages of convergence to IFRS.  Probably the foremost advantage is that companies would have the same reporting comparability.  All companies throughout the world would have the same principles to guide them when reporting assets and liabilities.  Investors would not need to translate financials to their currency in order to evaluate a multinational company.  Convergence would eventually reduce the cost of preparing financials for multinational companies.  Multinational companies would have less difficulty with transferring accounting personnel from one country to another.  Convergence would help raise the quality of accounting practices internationally.  This would encourage confidence of financial reporting for investors.

U.S. companies that have subsidiary companies in a country that has already adopted IFRS would no longer need to translate their financials to U.S. GAAP.

Regardless of the size of the company, all companies (large or small) will benefit by the convergence of IFRS by creating a playing field that is comparable for all.  In addition, investors will benefit by having a comparable financial statement to read that does not need translated from IFRS to U.S. GAAP or vice versa.

References

Doupnik, Timothy & Perera, Hector (2015) International Accounting Forth Edition.  McGraw-Hill Education.  New York, New York.

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