Starkie attack of IASB triggers further slating

The volume and range of International Accounting Standard Board (IASB)’s reporting standards may be consistent, but they have made published accounts less understandable than previously, says Richard Muir-Simpson, ACM Catalyst chief executive, in a to the editor of the Financial Times today.

Applauding Michael Starkie, BP’s chief accountant ‘unreservedly’, Muir-Simpson said the IASB ‘wishes to subjugate judgment - true and fair - and descriptive powers to a secondary or tertiary level with theoretical accounting dominating’.

‘That already looks uncomfortably close to US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and no one needs to be reminded of the problems emanating from US GAAP,’ he said.

‘The vast majority of those of us who work with published accounts expect them to be ‘true and fair’ and not written in language more normally associated with theoretical physics.’

Further reading:

The yeas and nays of the monitoring group

BP chief accountant slams 'unhelpful' IFRS 2218852

Read the Financial Times letter to the editor