Information Accounting: The Global IFRS Revolution

Abstract

Over the past few years the desire to create a global set of accounting rules has led to an ever increasing use of the IFRS released by the IASB. Today, IFRS are internationally the dominant set of accounting standards. The IASB has come to predominate over other international bodies concerned with international accounting issues, such as the OECD Working Group on Accounting Standards, the UN IntergovernmentalWorking Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting and the European Union’s Accounting Advisory Forum. This development had already been foreseen as long ago as 1976, by Sir Henry Benson, the founding chairman of the IASB’s predecessor, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), who predicted that the organisation’s standards would become dominant by about the turn of the millennium (Benson 1976). At the time this seemed like wild speculation, or at least hyperbole, but it has become a reality – and within the predicted time span – at least for listed companies.