ABSTRACT
The interest was clearly and early expressed for financial information quality and comparability. This has made accounting legislators concerned with the quality of financial statements preparation and disclosure. As a first effort, and departing from such consideration, the majority of accounting regulator bodies throughout the world adopted precise professional standards for monitoring financial reporting activities within their national boundaries. It has now become a generally accepted accounting principle, also referred to as GAAP. The objective of GAAP is precisely to ensure companies’ activities, comparability, reliability, and fairness in reporting over time. Corporate scandals in the year 2000 have exacerbated the search of transparency in financial reporting. In a second impetus, and under the capital market globalization pressure, the need for international comparability has also strongly emerged as well as the need for international convergence. Some advanced accounting professions (the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, but also Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, and the Netherlands) reacted to the need for international comparability in 1973 by creating the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC). It later became the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), aimed at elaborating and releasing international accounting standards for financial reporting and promoting their use worldwide—a derivative of GAAP to be recognized throughout the entire planet. Such accounting standards are called International Financial Reporting Standards or IFRS. Standards elaborated before April 1, 2001, remain entitled International Accounting Standards or IAS. For its part, the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) became a standard-setting body designated at the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB). This sets up international auditing standards.
