Jim Quigley, the new global head of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, has warned that global resources may impact on the profession on both sides of the Atlantic converging on one set of global accounting standards.

He said a set of global standard were ‘years away’.

‘If you want to take the largest capital market in the world [the US] and ask yourself: ‘do we have the training and capability to get auditors up the learning curve to deal with the new set of accounting standards and the education system to produce those accountants?’ – we need to think it through more deeply,’ Quigley said.

Quigley said though that there was momentum in this direction and added that investors were better served with converged standards.

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