As you may be aware, the SEC was expected to announce this year the path for which the US will take to incorporate the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) into the US financial reporting system.

On July 13, the SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant published its final report on its work plan for the consideration of incorporating international financial reporting standards into the US financial reporting system.

The staff report does not include a final decision as to whether IFRS should be incorporated into the US financial reporting system, or how such incorporation would incur. The staff report has indicated that there are still differences between US GAAP and IFRS that need further work. Additionally, the staff report has indicated that IFRS is generally perceived to be a high quality reporting system but there are still inconsistencies that exist in the application of IFRS globally.

The staff report indicates that additional analysis is needed before any SEC decisions would be made about the incorporation of IFRS into US GAAP. We expect that the SEC may not come to a final decision on the matter until 2013. We will keep you posted of any new developments with respect to the incorporation of IFRS into US GAAP.