IAS ACCOUNTING STANDARDS                                                 

IAS (and/or IASB) is the acronyme of International Accounting Standards Board, an independent, privately-funded accounting standard setter based in London, UK.

Board Members come from nine countries and have a variety of functional backgrounds. The Board is committed to developing, in the public interest, a single set of high quality, understandable and enforceable global accounting standards that require transparent and comparable information in general purpose financial statements.

In addition, the Board cooperates with national accounting standard setters to achieve convergence in accounting standards around the world. Today bigger part of countries in the world uses or accepts IAS accounting standard principles, with certain differences among countries that must be evaluated and updated before start-up a local company financial report.

This is the list of the above countries, updated to November 4th, 2003:

• Argentina

• Australia

• Austria

• Bahamas

• Bahrain

• Bangladesh

• Barbados

• Belgium

• Bolivia

• Botswana

• Brasil

• Bulgaria

• Canada

• Cayman Islands

• Cile

• China, Peoples Republic

• Colombia

• Costa Rica

• Croatia

• Cyprus

• Czech Republic

• Denmark

• Dominican Republic

• Ecuador

• Egypt

• El Salvador

• Fiji

• Finland

• France

• Georgia

• Germany

• Ghana

• Greece

• Guatemala

• Guyana

• Haiti

• Honduras

• Hong Kong

• Hungary

• Iceland

• India

• Indonesia

• Iran

• Iraq

• Ireland

• Israel

• Italy

• Jamaica

• Japan

• Jordan

• Kazakhstan

• Kenya

• Korea, Republic of

• Kuwait

• Kyrgyzstan

• Lao People's Democratic Republic

• Latvia

• Lebanon

• Lesotho

• Liberia

• Libya

• Lithuania

• Luxembourg

• Macedonia

• Malawi

• Malaysia

• Malta

• Mexico

• Moldova

• Myanmar

• Namibia

• Nepal

• Netherlands

• New Zealand

• Nicaragua

• Nigeria

• Norway

• Oman

• Pakistan

• Panama

• Paraguay

• Perù

• Philippines

• Poland

• Portugal

• Romania

• Russia

• Saudi Arabia

• Serbia and Montenegro

• Sierra Leone

• Singapore

• Slovenia

• South Africa

• Spain

• Sri Lanka

• Sudan

• Swaziland

• Sweden

• Switzerland

• Syria

• Taiwan

• Tanzania

• Thailand

• Trinidad & Tobago

• Tunisia

• Turkey

• Uganda

• Ukraine

• United Arab Emirates

• United Kingdom

• United States

• Uruguay

• Uzbekistan

• Venezuela

• Vietnam

• Zambia

• Zimbabwe

Some facts was very important to larger affirmation of IAS accounting standards:

• In 2000,  Basel Committee expressed support for IAS and for efforts to harmonize accounting internationally.

• During 2001, European Commission presented legislation to require use of IASC Standards for all listed companies no later than 2005.

• In January 14th, 2003 European Parliament has established to modernize the actual rules about European accounting standards, in the direction to update also small and medium companies (not stock-exchange listed) to have an accounting system in compliance with IASB (International Accounting Standards Board).

And on next January 1st, 2005, over 7,000 European stock-exchange listed companies must meet the European Commission rule that they adopt International Financial Reporting Standards for their group accounts. The objective of IAS  (International Accounting Standards) is to improve the transparency of accounts and advance the development of Europe's financial markets.

It is clear that the financial services industry as well as manufacturing industry are not so happy to changes the way they report, and make business. Insurers and banks, too, need to be prepared, and the tight schedule plan for implementation leaves little time for reflection. Financial services firms (not only in Europe,  but everywhere) need to act now to assess the future impact of IAS and prepare themselves for the transition. 

The same situation is meet by management consulting firms, that now will must to start internal plans of global support to the customers organisation (with a special focus on individuals which are involved in Accounting, Finance and Control area) during implementation of IAS rules.

Among described management consulting firms, Axe Consulting has a professional team that in real terms can support your company during transition process of IAS adoption.