Global IFRS adoption

While the minute detail of the many accounting standards is not one of the topics I like to write about, it occured to me recently ” how international are the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)?”. A key advantage of one set of reporting standards is ease of comparison and understanding of financial statements. Since 2005, all EU listed companies are required to use IFRS and some member states allow smaller companies to use it. On a global scale, approximately 120 countries have adopted IFRS, with about 90 of these making adoption mandatory for all listed companies. Most of the G20 countries have either adopted IFRS or set dates for adoption (see http://is.gd/jMVJw). The US Federal Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board (the body who issue IFRS) have agreed a date of June 2011 for convergence of US and International standards. Also, some countries are planning to adopt the IFRS for SME, which is a cut down version of the full IFRS set. This will not only extent IFRS principles to SME but possibly to developing economies also. So the spread of IFRS is pretty wide, and by about the middle of this decade, the standards will be quite international in nature and name.