Peter Bible, CPA, partner in charge at the public companies group of Amper, Politziner & Mattia

• Former chief accounting officer at General Motors
• Inaugural recipient of the Andrew Braden Award from Case Western University’s Weatherhead School of Management
• Served as chairman of the Financial Executives International’s Committee on Corporate Reporting

“I think users of financial information like to avoid excessive diversity in order to facilitate their job of making comparisons. When you have a set of standards that—I don’t want to say ‘encourages’—that allows for that diversification, I think it makes the job that much more difficult. It puts the onus back on the user to try to figure it out.”

Jack Ciesielski, CFA, CPA, publisher of the Analyst’s Accounting Observer

• Served on the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Emerging Issues Task Force, the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Accounting Standards Executive Committee
• Securities analyst, Legg Mason Value Trust, 1985–1992

“I think the question that has to be asked is, ‘What is the downside if we don’t move to IFRS now?’ All the naysayers who say that failing to migrate will be the end of US markets—are they really right or are we doing something because we are afraid? Frankly, I think it would be good to have competition for a while. In the end, convergence is good, but let’s stay on the path that we’ve been on, the evolution, where the FASB and IASB are working together and moving toward joint standards.”

Patrick Daugherty, JD, chief strategy partner in the business law department of Foley & Lardner

• Served as counsel to SEC commissioner Edward Fleischman during the Reagan administration
• Tendered and qualified as an expert in securities law in criminal fraud proceedings brought by the US Department of Justice
• Led the team of attorneys that invented the Euro Currency Trust, the first currency-based exchange-traded fund

“I doubt that IFRS will be as high a priority as reform of the financial market regulatory structure in the US. That will be such an all-consuming task that IFRS will be subordinated. Regulation of accounting will take a back seat to the regulation of finance. So that will slow the potential adoption down.”

Amy Edwards, senior manager at the on-call advisory services practice of Ernst & Young’s New York financial services office

• Specializes in asset management issues, with a special focus on FAS 157 and IFRS
• Served as the controller of a $10 billion hedge fund

“From an analyst’s standpoint, what is really going to be interesting is that, if this does happen in the SEC’s projected timeframe, you’re really going to have to understand US GAAP and IFRS at the same time and really be able to quantify those differences. There are going to be a couple of years when you are going to have to look at companies in the same industry, some of which are using GAAP and some of which are using IFRS, and understand why they have different earnings, why they have different ratios or different capital, until everyone is on the same page.”

Suzanne Hoffman, vice president of worldwide sales at Star Analytics

• Holds a certificate in management from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business
• Frequently gives seminars on business intelligence technologies and XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language)

“There is no doubt that this issue is the ‘quiet giant’ with far-reaching implications for securities analysts, finance departments, and investors. Given the current economic situation, it’s important to look at standards like IFRS in the context of the critical state of antiquated corporate finance systems for reporting and consolidation.”

Rudolph Jacob, PhD, professor of accounting and chair of the accounting department at Pace University

• Former faculty fellow at Coopers & Lybrand
• Research interests include financial, managerial, and international accounting issues

“Since IFRS is more principles-based than US GAAP, it allows for much more judgment in capturing the economic substance of a transaction. Preparers, auditors, and securities analysts will have to undergo a significant mindset change if the US adopts IFRS.”

Linda MacDonald, CPA, senior managing director in FTI Consulting’s forensic and litigation consulting division

• Served as a director at the FASB
• Served as a staff member at the SEC Division of Enforcement

“There are more than a hundred countries now that permit or require IFRS. The IASB is certainly in position to become the global standard setter, but in terms of understanding the move and opining on the timing, I think it’s important to keep in mind that both IFRS and US GAAP need improvement through the ongoing convergence efforts in process by the Boards.”

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Paul Munter, CPA, PhD, partner in the department of professional practice, audit and advisory services, KPMG

• Participated in the SEC’s IFRS roundtable, August 2008
• Served as the academic fellow in the office of the chief accountant at the SEC
• Former KPMG professor and chairman of the department of accounting at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida

“Ultimately, analysts should be as well-versed in IFRS financial statements as they are in US GAAP reporting. They will need to understand the nuances of IFRS in order to make appropriate investment decisions and recommendations. Investors will ultimately utilize reports from those analysts whose information is the most complete. Additionally, since foreign private issuers already can use IFRS and many do, there are a number of significant investment alternatives currently available to US investors reporting under IFRS.”

Vincent Papa, CFA, senior policy analyst at the CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity in London

• Serves on the IASB’s Analyst Representative Group
• Completing a doctoral thesis in derivative accounting and earnings management through the Cranfield School of Management
• Master’s degree in finance from London Business School

“It is very simplistic when people say that IFRS is all principles-based, versus US GAAP, which is rules-based. You really need to look at it on a standard-by-standard basis. You really need to look across the spectrum of standards and understand what that means across different countries.”

Bruce Pounder, CFM, CMA, president of Leveraged Logic

• Author of The Convergence Guidebook for Corporate Financial Reporting (Wiley 2009)
• Earned the Johnson & Johnson Gold Medal for achieving the highest score in the world on the examination to attain the certified financial manager designation in 2004
• Earned a diploma in international financial reporting from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants

“There is the potential for countries to introduce idiosyncratic differences in IFRS, and the risk is that we end up right back where we started, where every country has its own standards. It’s completely, completely the antithesis of the whole idea of us having one country-neutral global set of standards.”

Tom Selling, CPA, PhD, professor emeritus, Thunderbird School of Global Management

• Author of the Accounting Onion blog
• Former academic fellow in the office of the chief accountant at the SEC
• Coauthor of International Financial Reporting and Analysis (McGraw-Hill/Irwin 1999)

“Is a true international accounting language achievable? I don’t think anyone thinks so. Everyone thinks there is going to be a carve-out for different countries on different issues. Every country has different policy objectives for their accounting standards, so it is hard to see how one set of standards will fit everyone.”

Donna Street, PhD, professor and Al and Marcie Mahrt Chair in Accounting at the University of Dayton

• Vice president of publications for the International Association for Accounting Education and Research
• Associate coeditor of the Institutional Perspectives section of the Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting
• Author of more than 100 research articles

“In Europe in 2002 the EC said, ‘We’re going to do it,’ committing to move listed companies to IFRS in 2005. So at some point the SEC, with the support of Congress, has to say, ‘We’re going to do it,’ and set a date. Once we get to that point, then I think we can make the conversion in a few years. It’s not going to take forever. But the SEC has to make that decision and that seems to be the challenge right now.”

Shyam Sunder, PhD, James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at the Yale University School of Management

• Immediate past president of the American Accounting Association
• Author of six books and more than 150 papers
• World-renowned accounting theorist and experimental economist

“Even though IFRS is being sold in the US and across the world on the grounds of uniformity and comparability, there is no such thing. It will bring about neither uniformity nor comparability in any meaningful way.”