ABSTRACT
The goal of creating a single set of globally-accepted, highly understandable, and legally enforceable accounting standards has been around for many years. Only during the past 10 years, essentially with the 2001 appointment of Sir David Tweedie as Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), has significant progress been made in achieving this goal. The 2005 decision by the member nations of the European Union to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the 2009 decision by the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G20) at its Pittsburgh Summit to support IFRS adoption will be remembered as watershed moments in IFRS's rise to pre-eminence. Today, companies in over 120 countries are either required or allowed to adopt IFRS as their method of financial accounting and reporting (AICPA, 2011). Financial Management (2011) captures this widespread adoption of IFRS using a world map with superimposed country-specific IFRS-adoption traffic lights, a copy of which is reproduced here.
