Last November, the SEC voted to eliminate the reconciliation that must be included in a 20-F annual report if a foreign private issuer is presenting its financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as published by the IASB. The official release (No. 33-8879) came to be on December 21, 2007 - with an effective date of March 4, 2008.


That gap - no pun intended - means that affected companies with years ending after November 15, 2007 but wishing to file before March 4, 2008 will still have to comply with the reconciliation as it exists today. So we may still see a few reconciliations, and still get to ponder the wideness of the GAAP in the two sets of standards in terms of recent history. It's possible though, that the SEC will work with those affected companies and possibly grant them exceptions if their differences are minor enough. Too bad investors would never get to see what might be minor differences - and what might not be minor.

In other international news, the FASB sponsored a webcast yesterday. Subject: "Towards a Global Reporting System: Where are We and Where are We Going?" Moderated by Wall Street Journal reporter Senior V-P and Controller of PepsiCo; David Reilly, the panelists included Robert Herz, Chairman of the FASB; Peter Bridgman,Greg Jonas, Managing Director of Moody’s Investors Service, and Sam Ranzilla, Partner at KPMG LLC.

You can access the archived webcast at this FASB link. I haven't listened yet, but from what I've heard, there was general agreement among the group that a fully converged system of accounting could be achieved in about five years, maybe seven. Life comes at you fast, as the commercials say.