1 RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS OF 

 2 

 3 

 4 

 5 SEC ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

 6 ON IMPROVEMENTS TO FINANCIAL REPORTING 

 7 OPEN MEETING 

 8 

 9 

 10 Thursday, August 2, 2007 

 11 10:00 a.m. 

 12 

 13 

 14 SEC Headquarters 

 15 100 F Street, N.E. 

 16 Auditorium L-002 

 17 Washington, D.C. 

 18 

 19 

 20 

 21 

 22 

 23 

 24 

 25 
Page 2 

 1 COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT 

 2 

 3 Dennis Beresford 

 4 Susan Bies 

 5 Michael Cook 

 6 Jeffrey Diermeier 

 7 Scott Evans 

 8 Linda Griggs 

 9 Joseph Grundfest 

 10 Gregory Jonas 

 11 Christopher Liddell 

 12 William Mann, III 

 13 G. Edward McClammy 

 14 Edward Nusbaum 

 15 Robert Pozen, Committee Chair 

 16 James Quigley 

 17 David Sidwell 

 18 Thomas Weatherford 

 19 

 20 

 21 COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT 

 22 

 23 Peter Wallison 

 24 

 25 
Page 3 

 1 OFFICIAL OBSERVERS PRESENT 

 2 

 3 Robert Herz 

 4 Kristen Jaconi 

 5 Arthur Leder for Charles Holm 

 6 Mark Olson 

 7 

 8 OFFICIAL OBSERVERS ABSENT 

 9 

 10 Phil Laskaway 

 11 

 12 SEC AND COMMITTEE STAFF 

 13 

 14 Conrad Hewitt, SEC Chief Accountant 

 15 Jim Kroeker, SEC Deputy Chief Accountant 

 16 John White, SEC Director of Division of Corporate Finance 

 17 Russell Golden, FASB Senior Advisor to Committee Chairman 

 18 

 19 

 20 

 21 

 22 

 23 

 24 

 25 
Page 4 

 1 C O N T E N T S 

 2 

 3 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 5 

 4 Chairman Christopher Cox, 

 5 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 

 6 

 7 ADDITIONAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND 9 

 8 COMMITTEE MEMBER INTRODUCTIONS 

 9 Conrad W. Hewitt, Chief Accountant 

 10 Robert Pozen, Committee Chair 

 11 

 12 COMMENTS ON DISCUSSION PAPER 22 

 13 

 14 CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS 93 

 15 

 16 ADJOURNMENT 125 

 17 

 18 CERTIFICATION 126 

 19 

 20 EXHIBIT A -- AGENDA 

 21 EXHIBIT B -- DISCUSSION PAPER 

 22 EXBIBIT C -- INDEX OF WRITTEN STATEMENTS RECEIVED 

 23 

 24 

 25 
Page 5 

 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 

 2 (10:10 a.m.) 

 3 OPENING REMARKS 

 4 CHAIRMAN COX: Good morning and welcome to the 

 5 Securities and Exchange Commission. I am pleased to be here 

 6 for this first meeting of the advisory committee on 

 7 improvements to financial reporting, and I want to welcome 

 8 all of the members of this committee and thank each of the 

 9 members and the observers for agreeing to serve. I 

 10 particularly want to thank the committee's chairman Bob Pozen 

 11 for his leadership. 

 12 Earlier this week we celebrated the fifth 

 13 anniversary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The stated purpose of 

 14 that act was to "protect investors by improving the accuracy 

 15 and reliability of corporate disclosures." Among its many 

 16 provisions the act rather presciently called for an 

 17 examination of ways to combat growing complexity in financial 

 18 reporting. 

 19 If you remember that in one of the paradigm cases 

 20 that led to this landmark legislation, the Enron case, much 

 21 of the fraud was hidden in a thicket of accounting 

 22 complexity. 

 23 The act called for studies on the use of 

 24 principles-based accounting systems and disclosures regarding 

 25 off balance sheet transactions. These resulted in well 
Page 6 

 1 thought out reports to Congress on ways that financial 

 2 reporting could be improved. Many of those reports have 

 3 recommendations that have already been implemented or that 

 4 are in the process of being implemented, but this work and 

 5 these reports were just the beginning. 

 6 We've continued our efforts by joining with the 

 7 FASB and with the PCAOB in an all out war on complexity in 

 8 accounting. When it comes to giving investors the protection 

 9 that they need, information is the single most powerful and 

 10 important tool that we have. And surely we can't say that we 

 11 have achieved our investor protection objectives, not only 

 12 the mission of this agency but the very stated purpose of the 

 13 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, if the information is provided in a way 

 14 that isn't clearly understandable to the men and women who 

 15 use it to make decisions. 

 16 The truth is that financial reporting has become 

 17 overly complex. That means not only are financial statements 

 18 difficult for investors to understand but also companies 

 19 incur excessive cost as a result of complying with voluminous 

 20 and overly prescriptive accounting and reporting rules. Your 

 21 job on this committee is to help us end this destructive 

 22 cycle and to get our financial reporting system back to first 

 23 principles. 

 24 We're asking you to help us reduce complexity and 

 25 all of its costly burdens. When it comes to financial 
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 1 statements, most investors today would probably find 

 2 themselves agreeing with Mark Twain who said, "the more you 

 3 explain it, the more I don't understand it." That's why 

 4 we've called on leaders from the private sector to advise us 

 5 on what steps we need to take. 

 6 Empowering investors doesn't just mean better 

 7 access to information. It also means access to information 

 8 in a form that they can really use. So simply put the 

 9 question is, once that SEC-mandated information is available, 

 10 is it useful, is it understandable? And the answer, all too 

 11 often, has been a resounding and frustrated "no," 

 12 particularly among individual investors at a time when over 

 13 half of U.S. households own securities. 

 14 It's even more frustrating when the process of 

 15 preparing that information by issuers involves unnecessary 

 16 costs and procedures and uncertainty about what is required 

 17 of them. That's why I am so pleased to have chartered this 

 18 committee. 

 19 The Committee on Improvements to Financial 

 20 Reporting already has a catchy acronym, CIFiR, which brings 

 21 to mind the cryptographic tools of the intelligence 

 22 community. Well, it shouldn't require a secret decoder ring 

 23 to understand what's going on in your financial statements. 

 24 So with your help today we are opening up another 

 25 front in our war on complexity by gathering the views of a 
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 1 wide variety of constituents including preparers and users 

 2 and those who assist and advise them. We look forward to 

 3 this committee providing specific recommendations on how 

 4 unnecessary complexity in the financial reporting system can 

 5 be reduced and how the system can be made more useful to 

 6 investors. 

 7 Your enabling charter describes several areas that 

 8 the committee will focus on, including the current approach 

 9 to setting financial accounting reporting standards, the 

 10 current process of regulating compliance with those 

 11 standards, factors that may drive unnecessary complexity and 

 12 reduce transparency, and any lessons that can be learned from 

 13 the growing use of international financial reporting 

 14 standards. 

 15 I've also asked the committee as part of its 

 16 consideration of our financial reporting system to focus on 

 17 how technology might be used to address accounting complexity 

 18 by making financial information more useful to a greater 

 19 number of investors. For example, through the power of 

 20 interactive data the opportunity exists to redesign the 

 21 financial reporting system to deliver precisely the type and 

 22 level of information that each individual investor needs. 

 23 I want to thank the members and observers once 

 24 again for your participation on this advisory committee. I 

 25 look forward to your work, as do my fellow commissioners, and 
Page 9 

 1 your thoughtful recommendations on this vitally important 

 2 mandate. 

 3 I want now to turn it over to our Chief Accountant, 

 4 Conrad Hewitt, for his introductory remarks. 

 5 ADDITIONAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

 6 MR. HEWITT: Thank you, Chairman Cox and good 

 7 morning to everyone. Also I'd like to welcome all of the 

 8 committee members to the first meeting of the Advisory 

 9 Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting. 

 10 The formation of this committee has been a top 

 11 priority for me. When I first interviewed with Chairman Cox 

 12 over a year ago, becoming the Chief Accountant, he indicated 

 13 his desire to form a committee to study how we could make 

 14 improvements to our financial reporting system. 

 15 As part of this effort he wanted to see what could 

 16 be done to reduce the complexity of financial reporting for 

 17 the benefit of companies and investors. Based upon my 

 18 experience on several boards and as chairman of several audit 

 19 committees, I too thought this was a worthwhile endeavor and 

 20 its one of the main reasons I am here. 

 21 I'm very happy to be able to address the committee 

 22 and welcome it to the public. 

 23 Now the U.S. system of financial reporting has long 

 24 been the most robust and transparent in the world. However 

 25 in order for us to retain our position as the gold standard 
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 1 we must from time to time step back and evaluate what changes 

 2 may be necessary. 

 3 From my various roles as an auditor, director of a 

 4 board, audit committee chairman and regulator over the years, 

 5 it has become increasingly apparent to me that the current 

 6 system has become overly complex. The financial reporting 

 7 system needs to be improved to more effectively meet the 

 8 needs of the entire spectrum of investors. 

 9 As you know, the Commission's mission is to protect 

 10 investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets and 

 11 facilitate capital formation. Financial reporting permeates 

 12 every aspect of this mission, making this committee an 

 13 important element in supporting the Commission's role in the 

 14 U.S. capital market. 

 15 Please consider the following. As Chairman Cox 

 16 just mentioned, today equity securities are broadly held with 

 17 approximately half of the American households investing in 

 18 stocks. This presents a challenge. Investors have expressed 

 19 concern that one-size-fits-all financial reports of today do 

 20 not meet the needs of the spectrum of investors that rely on 

 21 these reports. 

 22 Individual investors may be interested primarily in 

 23 summarized, plain-English reports that are easily 

 24 understandable, and may find it difficult to understand all 

 25 of the underlying detail, including the financial reports 
Page 11 

 1 that are currently produced. 

 2 On the other hand, market analysts and other 

 3 investment professionals may desire information at a far more 

 4 granular level than is currently provided. Technology 

 5 certainly must play a future role in delivering the 

 6 customized level of information that different types of 

 7 investors may desire and need. 

 8 Aside from the investors' concerns companies have 

 9 expressed concerns with our current financial reporting 

 10 system. Many companies assert that it's difficult to ensure 

 11 compliance with the voluminous requirements contained in U.S. 

 12 GAAP and SEC reporting rules when preparing financial 

 13 reports. 

 14 In fact, during 2006, this past year, almost 10 

 15 percent of the U.S. public companies restated their prior 

 16 financial reports. To me this is an alarmingly high number 

 17 and really has the potential to obscure those companies with 

 18 serious underlying problems as opposed to those companies 

 19 with unintentional misapplications of complex and nuanced 

 20 accounting literature. 

 21 Restatements are costly to companies and can 

 22 undermine the confidence of investors in our financial 

 23 reporting system. So committee members, as you study these 

 24 issues I encourage you to look beyond the accounting applied 

 25 in the basic financial statements and footnotes. I believe 
Page 12 

 1 you should consider more broadly the array of information 

 2 that investors need to make informed decisions. 

 3 Today the U.S. capital markets can run fairly 

 4 orderly and efficiently, but only through the steady flow of 

 5 comprehensive and meaningful information. As some have 

 6 noted, the percentage of a company's market value that could 

 7 be attributable to accounting book value has declined 

 8 significantly from the days of a brick and mortar economy. 

 9 Thus, you as a committee may want to consider a 

 10 more comprehensive business reporting model including both 

 11 financial and nonfinancial key performance indicators. I 

 12 think we all must also consider how to deliver all this 

 13 information more timely. 

 14 In the twenty-first century, in a world where 

 15 messages can be sent across the world in the blink of an eye, 

 16 it is ironic that the analysis of financial information is 

 17 still subject to many manual processes resulting in delays, 

 18 increased costs and errors. 

 19 Now as you can see the improvement of financial 

 20 reporting involves more than -- for example, an effort to 

 21 trim down hundreds of pages of guidance on accounting for 

 22 derivative instruments. Instead, to me, improvements to our 

 23 financial reporting goes beyond the complexity debate to 

 24 encompass the usefulness of financial reporting and the 

 25 delivery of information to investors. 
Page 13 

 1 As you consider these issues I encourage you also 

 2 to consider how you would define complexity and the scope of 

 3 areas that you believe should be addressed as part of an 

 4 effort to improve financial reporting. Throughout the next 

 5 year I encourage you to consider the expertise and work 

 6 performed by others in tackling the many facets of this 

 7 issue. 

 8 Academics, organizations and private citizens alike 

 9 have performed research and provided numerous recommendations 

 10 that may bear on the matters you will deliberate. They will 

 11 also continue to do so via the many opportunities for public 

 12 comment that you as a committee will provide. 

 13 Now in some cases activities related to the many 

 14 topics you will consider are already underway. For example, 

 15 reconsideration of the conceptual framework by FASB and IASB, 

 16 codification of U.S. GAAP by FASB, international convergence 

 17 efforts, development of an enhanced business reporting 

 18 framework and use of XBRL among others. 

 19 However I also encourage you to begin your 

 20 considerations with a blank sheet of paper, an open mind that 

 21 is not bound by past precedent, current activities, popular 

 22 or fad views, opinions or political pressure. I suggest that 

 23 maybe you want to think outside the box. 

 24 Now I recognize the ambitious nature of our goals 

 25 and the enormous amount of work ahead of us. However with 
Page 14 

 1 the formation of this committee we have the potential to 

 2 continue to improve our financial reporting system, 

 3 solidifying the position of U.S. capital markets as the most 

 4 transparent and reliable in the world. 

 5 I am confident that with your varied backgrounds, 

 6 experience and points of views as well as the participation 

 7 of those that you represent in this process we will be able 

 8 to address the matters that lie before us. 

 9 In closing, for many years into the future 

 10 investors should benefit from your recommendations. I 

 11 sincerely appreciate your commitment to this committee. My 

 12 staff and I look forward to working with you in this process 

 13 and I personally thank you for joining this important 

 14 committee. 

 15 With that, I'll turn the floor over to my deputy 

 16 chief accountant Jim Kroeker who will call the meeting to 

 17 order, and then he'll turn it over to the chairman, Bob 

 18 Pozen. 

 19 Jim. Thank you, all. 

 20 MR. KROEKER: Thanks, Conrad. 

 21 I just wanted to echo the thanks that Conrad and 

 22 Chairman Cox have already expressed to the committee members. 

 23 Considering how to improve the usefulness of financial 

 24 reporting is an extremely important endeavor and one that I 

 25 and our staff look forward to working with the committee on. 
Page 15 

 1 In the interest of hearing directly from committee members on 

 2 the discussion of the content of this meeting I won't make 

 3 any additional remarks. Rather, I'll turn the floor over to 

 4 the committee chair Bob Pozen. 

 5 Bob, the floor and the meeting is yours. 

 6 MR. POZEN: Thank you, and thank you, Con, for those 

 7 excellent remarks. I'll just sit here in order to generate 

 8 the committee quality of discussion that we hope to have this 

 9 morning. I'll just make a few preliminary remarks and then 

 10 move us into the discussion paper. 

 11 I would say that the reason why we need -- why do 

 12 we need this committee? In my mind, there are three main 

 13 reasons. One is, if we look at this from the preparers' and 

 14 the auditors' point of view, those are the people who put 

 15 together financial statements. As Con pointed out, we in 

 16 2006 had about 10 percent of all U.S. companies that restated 

 17 their financials. 

 18 This is a group of people who are trying very hard 

 19 to get it right. They have a lot at stake in getting it 

 20 right, yet we have this very, very high volume of financial 

 21 restatements. So that shows that we aren't really giving 

 22 enough guidance to people. We don't have these standards 

 23 right. 

 24 When that many people try that hard and have that 

 25 high an error rate it's not a good result. The second thing 
Page 16 

 1 is that we look at users. We see individual investors. Many 

 2 individual investors tell us that when we get these 10-Ks or 

 3 prospectuses they just can't read them, they put them in the 

 4 trash. That's not a very good place for disclosure 

 5 documents. 

 6 They want summaries. They want easy. They want 

 7 something that they can grasp quickly. 

 8 On the other hand, if you talk to sophisticated 

 9 investors they'll tell you that there's not enough 

 10 information, and it's not in the right format, it doesn't go 

 11 deep enough, there aren't enough indicators. So we have two 

 12 groups that -- one of whom wants a much simpler format and 

 13 another which wants a much more sophisticated format. We've 

 14 been a one-size fits all and it doesn't seem to fit that 

 15 well. 

 16 The third thing is the growth of press releases. 

 17 For those of us on audit committees or companies it's like 

 18 the press release has become the alternative communication 

 19 vehicle. This is a vehicle which summarizes what the company 

 20 has done in the last quarter of the last year and it also 

 21 contains a lot of non-GAAP financials, which are the 

 22 company's way of saying, "look, this is what's really 

 23 important; these are our core earnings; let's strip out 

 24 things like currency fluctuations," or things like that. 

 25 So I think these are three things that really 
Page 17 

 1 indicate that we have a problem. We have a very good system 

 2 but we really need improvement. It's not so easy to solve 

 3 these problems, or as we're going to say to decipher these 

 4 problems. We have various pundits who say, well, what we 

 5 need to do is just adopt the UK system of principles versus 

 6 rules or the IFRS system of principles. 

 7 I think we all understand that in any of these 

 8 systems they have rules as well as principles and the real 

 9 question is how do you mix principles and rules. And I think 

 10 it's also true in the U.S. litigation environment there is a 

 11 desire for rules to protect people who are in good faith 

 12 trying to get the system right. 

 13 So I think we can make some headway in that, but I 

 14 don't believe that the principle versus rule distinction is 

 15 the solution here. It's an aspect that we can look at, but 

 16 we shouldn't believe that that's the answer. 

 17 The other thing that we have to recognize is some 

 18 of the reason that we have complexity is because the economic 

 19 transactions are complex. Some of the reasons we have 

 20 complexity is because we have a difference of viewpoints 

 21 between preparers and users. Most sophisticated users, for 

 22 instance, would want more segments, but preparers don't want 

 23 to have as many segments. 

 24 So these are very real and genuine tensions in the 

 25 system and they are not easily resolved. But nevertheless 
Page 18 

 1 this committee will come to grips with these issues in, I 

 2 believe, a very deep and fundamental way, and we are 

 3 committed to coming out with proposals by next August. 

 4 And I would say the proposals I hope will have two 

 5 characteristics. One is that they'll be doable; that is, 

 6 they'll be easy to adopt. That first of all means that they 

 7 will not require legislation. We should try to stay away 

 8 from proposals that require legislation because 

 9 Congress -- once things get into Congress it's a very 

 10 difficult environment in order to implement something. 

 11 The second thing is that we do have the support of 

 12 the SEC, FASB and PCAOB and we ought to take advantage of 

 13 that. There have been many commissions in the last few years 

 14 by different private groups, but those are commissions that 

 15 have just basically decided they want to put forth their view 

 16 to the agencies. Here the agencies have said we need help, 

 17 we want your input and we are happy to have -- Con, your 

 18 support, Bob Herz's support, Mark Olson's support and various 

 19 staff members like Jim and Russ who will work with us. 

 20 So this is not a case in which we're going to come 

 21 out of the blue with these proposals next August. We're 

 22 going to have vetted them. We're going to have worked with 

 23 people so that these will be, in my view, doable. The other 

 24 thing is I would hope that the proposals would be focused. 

 25 Focus, focus and focus as they say in real estate. 
Page 19 

 1 We cannot possibly address every single issue in 

 2 financial reporting. This is a huge subject and there are 

 3 many areas, many aspects of it, but we can focus on those 

 4 areas where we think we can make substantial improvements. 

 5 We want to identify those areas where there's a consensus 

 6 that there is something wrong and we can improve it by doing 

 7 various things. 

 8 And I think if we can focus on those areas and 

 9 identify those areas that that will be a success. So this 

 10 committee should not be judged at the end by whether we have 

 11 100 recommendations. I hope we won't have 100 

 12 recommendations. I'd rather see us have 10 or 12 

 13 recommendations of things that are actually doable which 

 14 really substantially increase performance. 

 15 Now I'd like to turn to the discussion paper. This 

 16 is in the booklet that has been handed out to you with a very 

 17 nice cover. And I should say that this represents my view 

 18 and not the views of the Commission and it actually doesn't 

 19 even represent the views of the committee because they hadn't 

 20 seen it until a week or two ago. 

 21 But this discussion paper attempts to lay out five 

 22 areas where the committee may choose to focus, and within 

 23 that to delineate issues that could be addressed. The five 

 24 main areas are substantive complexity, the standard setting 

 25 process, number two, compliance audit, number three, delivery 
Page 20 

 1 of information, number four, and international coordination, 

 2 number five. 

 3 Just to sort of help the group here in the 

 4 audience, by substantive complexity we mean some of the 

 5 things that Chairman Cox is talking about, why are these 

 6 accounting standards so long, why are people having 

 7 difficulty following them, difficulty comparing them, why are 

 8 they so complex? In the standard setting process we're 

 9 talking about how the FASB goes about adopting accounting 

 10 standards and probably more importantly how they get 

 11 interpreted down the line as people come to actually apply 

 12 these standards either at the registrant level or at the 

 13 industry level. 

 14 In the compliance audit area we're talking about 

 15 how the audit process occurs, what happens between 

 16 accountants and their companies and we're talking about how 

 17 these financial statements are reviewed by Corp Fin here at 

 18 the SEC and ultimately the inspection process at the PCAOB, 

 19 the inspection process of auditors and the enforcement 

 20 process at the SEC. 

 21 The fourth area we're looking at is information 

 22 delivery. This is an area where we're talking about how we 

 23 can take the body of information and deliver it to investors 

 24 in formats and packages that are more appropriate to their 

 25 needs. How can we go to summary prospectuses, how can we use 
Page 21 

 1 some of the things that Chairman Cox is doing in XBRL to make 

 2 these financial statements more usable to different groups of 

 3 investors? 

 4 And fifth is international. International 

 5 coordination is very much on the Commission's plate. Just 

 6 had a proposal on foreign registrants, and now there is a 

 7 concept release on U.S. registrants. I think probably at 

 8 least my initial suggestion is that we concentrate on the 

 9 first four areas and wait a little to get into international 

 10 coordination because we will then have the benefit of all the 

 11 comments that will come in over the next few months on these 

 12 two proposals. 

 13 So that's just an introduction to these areas, and 

 14 I don't want to take up any more time. So we are now going 

 15 to move to agenda item number four, which is comments on the 

 16 discussion paper. And what I'm going to ask is that each 

 17 member of the committee have an opportunity in five minutes 

 18 or so to give their views as to whether these are good areas 

 19 for the committee to look at, whether within these areas we 

 20 should add, subtract or multiply issues and have a chance to 

 21 give -- help scope out the work of the committee. 

 22 So I think our attempt here at the end of this 

 23 session would be to reach more or less a consensus about what 

 24 areas the committee is going to focus on and within that what 

 25 are the issues that we are going to particularly try to 
Page 22 

 1 analyze. 

 2 So we're going to go in alphabetical order here and 

 3 I'm going to also use this opportunity just to introduce a 

 4 little more the members of the committee. I think on the SEC 

 5 web site we have the full biography of all the committee 

 6 members, and we do have a very distinguished group. 

 7 So going in alphabetical order we're going to start 

 8 with Denny Beresford, who is the Ernst and Young professor of 

 9 accounting at the University of Georgia. Mr. Beresford, as 

 10 many of you know, was chairman of FASB for a decade between 

 11 1987 and 1997. He also is a member of the audit committee of 

 12 several large fortune 500 companies. 

 13 So I'm hoping that, Denny, you might be able to 

 14 give us your views on the discussion paper and the issues 

 15 before the committee. Thank you. 

 16 COMMENTS ON DISCUSSION PAPER 

 17 MR. BERESFORD: Thanks, Bob. 

 18 I think my comments are maybe just a little broader 

 19 than the paper, but I hope they'll inform the debate. First 

 20 of all, I'm extremely proud to be part of this important 

 21 advisory committee and I thank Chris Cox for appointing me. 

 22 My colleagues and friends in Athens, Georgia 

 23 thought this was a very big deal until they realized that the 

 24 SEC reference had nothing to do with college football. But 

 25 this is a serious issue we face today and I don't want to 
Page 23 

 1 treat it lightly. 

 2 In the early 1990s when I chaired the FASB we 

 3 developed our first notion of a strategic plan. The 

 4 foundation of that plan was what we described as the three 

 5 S's. Those S's stood for selective, simple and speed. Thus, 

 6 the board and staff agreed that we needed to be more 

 7 selective in choosing agenda projects and working only on 

 8 topics that truly needed improved reporting, that we needed 

 9 to simplify our standards in terms of complexity of 

 10 solutions, length and understandability and that we needed to 

 11 streamline our due process procedures. 

 12 We couldn't keep taking five years or more to 

 13 develop new standards because outside support for change 

 14 tends to erode over such a lengthy period. All board members 

 15 signed off on that plan in relatively short order. However, 

 16 as is clearly indicated by our being here today there was no 

 17 real commitment to change by individual board members. 

 18 In the past four or five years following SEC and 

 19 FASB initiatives on simplification and principles versus 

 20 rules there certainly has been more effort on these 

 21 confounding issues, but actual changes have been relatively 

 22 modest, and other developments such as international 

 23 convergence have created new challenges. 

 24 Thus we obviously need a fresh way of looking at 

 25 the challenges and a new commitment to dealing with them. In 
Page 24 

 1 short, while I am delighted that these high level resources 

 2 are now being devoted to improving financial reporting we 

 3 need to assure that this effort results in actions rather 

 4 than just words. I certainly second what Bob said earlier. 

 5 At a recent audit committee chairman roundtable I 

 6 attended, one of the members, the retired chief executive 

 7 officer of a fortune 500 company gave his personal definition 

 8 for the term GAAP. He said the GAAP means you need to follow 

 9 this rule even though it doesn't make sense because otherwise 

 10 you'll go to jail. 

 11 Now that's not exactly the highest form of praise 

 12 for what has been an important part of my life for the past 

 13 35 years. My point in mentioning this is that I feel 

 14 strongly we must deal with the relevance of current and 

 15 proposed GAAP rather than just its complexity. Let me give a 

 16 couple of examples. 

 17 I'm on the board of Fannie Mae. We use derivatives 

 18 extensively to hedge the spread between a very large mortgage 

 19 asset portfolio and related borrowings. As you know from a 

 20 lot of press coverage, the excruciating details of hedge 

 21 accounting under Statement 133 are too problematic and 

 22 therefore the resulting recognition of gains and losses 

 23 currently in the income statement doesn't come close to 

 24 reflecting the true economic performance of the company. 

 25 As another example, in the FASB's forthcoming 
Page 25 

 1 standard on business combination procedures, many aspects 

 2 will be seen as nonsensical by businesspeople, particularly 

 3 having to take legal and other directly related acquisition 

 4 expenditures as current period expenses rather than being 

 5 added to the costs of the acquisition and recording 

 6 liabilities for less than likely legal contingencies at their 

 7 supposed fair values and then marking them to market each 

 8 quarter thereafter. 

 9 Can you imagine new tables in the Wall Street 

 10 Journal listing current market values for lawsuits in 

 11 process? 

 12 Complexity is a critical issue, and I sincerely 

 13 hope that a number of actionable points will come from our 

 14 committee's efforts, but we also need to keep in mind that 

 15 accounting should be a practical activity. It's been 

 16 described by the language of business and by some as a form 

 17 of report card on a company's performance. 

 18 Using that report card analogy I can assure you 

 19 that the system I've used to assign grades to students in the 

 20 past ten years isn't considered perfect, but it's relatively 

 21 simple and it's a good indication of actual performance. I 

 22 hope that our work over the next year can help financial 

 23 reporting better meet those same objectives. 

 24 Thanks, Bob. 

 25 MR. POZEN: Thank you, Denny. I guess I'd like to 
Page 26 

 1 next go to Susan Bies. Susan was governor of the Federal 

 2 Reserve Board here in Washington from 2001 to 2007. Before 

 3 that, Dr. Bies was Executive VP for Risk Management and Audit 

 4 at First Tennessee National Corporation. So she brings both 

 5 a lot of knowledge in terms of the regulatory process and a 

 6 particular expertise in the banking area. 

 7 MS. BIES: Thank you, Bob. Sitting on this 

 8 committee, while I've been both the preparer and I served on 

 9 the EITF and I've been a regulator, I've been asked to really 

 10 sort of reflect the regulator's perspective on the various 

 11 issues that the committee will cover. And I wanted to sort 

 12 of lay the ground around some issues that maybe are a little 

 13 unique from a regulatory perspective. 

 14 So let me just raise the issues. I'm not going to 

 15 attempt to answer them today. 

 16 One of the challenges around the complexity issue, 

 17 as already been mentioned is the fact that there are a lot of 

 18 different users of financial statements. If we look at the 

 19 banking system in the United States, we worry very much as 

 20 regulators about something called moral hazard. We want the 

 21 market, the depositors, anyone who has got exposure to a bank 

 22 to bear the risk that the bank could go under. We don't want 

 23 a safety net to be there which would require another bailout 

 24 like we had with the S&L crisis of the '80s. 

 25 But the typical consumer has a terrible time 
Page 27 

 1 understanding financial concepts in general -- witness what 

 2 we're going through right now with subprime mortgages -- much 

 3 less a corporate financial statement. 

 4 So how can we develop a framework that would allow 

 5 a depositor to know how strong their bank is that they're 

 6 choosing and yet provide the kind of information that 

 7 regulators need and sophisticated investors in the market use 

 8 -- those who buy the securities that are issued by the debt 

 9 of those organizations. It's a real challenge, and also we 

 10 have very complex organizations, very small little 

 11 organizations. How do we balance the difficulty of the 

 12 preparer's side of this too? And it's going to be something 

 13 we'll talk more about. 

 14 The other challenge that I think we've got, and 

 15 this really I think comes out very prominently in financial 

 16 services, is that I think some of the places where we tend to 

 17 have tension between preparers and some users of financial 

 18 statements and I know around some of the standards that have 

 19 been set in the past, really reflects the fact that we're 

 20 asking preparers to put together financial information in a 

 21 way that doesn't reflect how the business is managed or how a 

 22 regulator would look at it. 

 23 Let me give you a couple examples. There is a big 

 24 push to do fair value accounting around financial 

 25 instruments. Now for trading book this makes perfect sense 
Page 28 

 1 because it's got tremendous turn. It's going to turn a 

 2 couple times a day and so you really want to know what is 

 3 realizable and what's at the end of the day sitting there 

 4 which will be your gains and losses tomorrow when you pick up 

 5 the books and start running again, so it makes perfect sense. 

 6 Well, what about a loan book that is not destined 

 7 to be traded? There is no borrower who will ever pay more 

 8 than they borrowed or any penny more than the interest they 

 9 owe on the loan. So when we do a fair value on something 

 10 that's never going to be traded all we're doing is creating 

 11 timing differences, and we need to ask, is this appropriate 

 12 and how do we distinguish between timing differences that 

 13 will reverse and what is permanently earned income? 

 14 Bank regulators are struggling with this on the 

 15 definition of capital for banks because we have some things 

 16 that flow through fair value mark to market and go through 

 17 the earnings statement, end up in equity, that we know will 

 18 disappear the next day. And so the quality of capital is 

 19 very important when we look at the leverage of an 

 20 organization and its ability to sustain surprises. 

 21 This also raises issues about the operations in a 

 22 service business as opposed to just a financial instrument 

 23 itself. Mortgage servicing rights, for example, the 

 24 accounting says, when you create them, because you're going 

 25 to service mortgages that are sold in the pool, you recognize 
Page 29 

 1 all the gain up front. 

 2 Now during the dot com -- we got all upset when the 

 3 dot com companies booked revenue from contracts up front. We 

 4 thought it wasn't appropriate. And as a regulator I am 

 5 concerned in the past that we were booking the fair value of 

 6 the servicing rights without any regard whether that 

 7 particular company had higher or lower costs to service or 

 8 the quality of the mortgages or the size of the mortgages 

 9 where they would actually -- more or less than the fair 

 10 value, and so the operational numbers got mixed up. 

 11 And finally part of it is around risk. Markets are 

 12 trying more and more to manage risk. I think some of the 

 13 standards don't reflect current risk management practices. 

 14 But more importantly we focus so much on a precise number and 

 15 the precision I think implies more accuracy than we'll ever 

 16 really accomplish in the world of financial instruments. And 

 17 so we need to find a way to give supplemental disclosure 

 18 around risks and make it more useful. 

 19 The last point I would like to say -- I really hope 

 20 the committee does spend some time looking at technology. 

 21 Two years ago the banking regulators did the first global 

 22 project in the United States to have all 8,000 financial 

 23 institutions use XBRL to do their financial reporting every 

 24 quarter. We have found that this has greatly reduced errors. 

 25 The processing time of call reports has gone from weeks to 
Page 30 

 1 days, so errors are caught quickly. And it allows us to do 

 2 very fast comparisons to identify outlier banks. 

 3 Now clearly we have a fixed format so it's a little 

 4 bit easier than it's going to be for all registrants, but at 

 5 least it's a lesson that says, "this is a wonderful new 

 6 technology," and I would hope that we can help encourage that 

 7 that goes forward as part of work that we do going forward. 

 8 And again, I thank Chairman Cox for nominating me 

 9 and naming me to this committee and I look forward to working 

 10 with everyone. 

 11 MR. POZEN: Thank you very much, Susan. The third 

 12 member of the committee will be Michael Cook. Michael is the 

 13 retired chairman of Deloitte and he is a member of the board 

 14 of directors of a number of companies, and I would say that 

 15 in every company where he's a member of the board he winds up 

 16 being either on the audit committee or a chairman of the 

 17 audit committee. 

 18 Mike and I also had the pleasure of working 

 19 together at Fidelity, so I'm glad to have Michael with us. 

 20 MR. COOK: Thank you, Bob. Like the others, I 

 21 appreciate the invitation to be a part of this group. I 

 22 applaud the mission of improving financial reporting. I 

 23 think that's very necessary and very important. 

 24 I also applaud the breadth of the charge and the 

 25 breadth of the issues that are covered in the discussion 
Page 31 

 1 paper. I for one have concerns that others do about 

 2 complexity and delivery of information, but I would say those 

 3 are not by any means the only issues that need to be dealt 

 4 with -- and as promptly as some of these can be dealt with in 

 5 the area of improving financial reporting. 

 6 For me they are part of the agenda but for me also 

 7 the most important part of the agenda and a bigger issue is 

 8 how do we make financial information, the financial reporting 

 9 process more relevant and more useful to people who rely on 

 10 the outputs of that system. 

 11 With that in mind I applaud also the charge to this 

 12 committee that it is not limited to traditional financial 

 13 statements or financial statement packages but rather the 

 14 financial reporting process in the broadest sense because 

 15 frankly I don't think in one year or maybe in the lifetime of 

 16 many of us we can fix or deal with all the issues that exist 

 17 with respect to financial reporting in the context of 

 18 financial statements. We have to leave that to Bob and his 

 19 colleagues at the FASB and colleagues at the IASB. 

 20 And hopefully some of those things can be 

 21 addressed, but they are much more long term in nature than 

 22 anything that we would do in one year. I would suggest the 

 23 balance sheet is probably as illustrative of that as 

 24 anything. It is coincidental today if the balance sheet 

 25 represented the assets and liabilities of the corporation 
Page 32 

 1 other than in accordance with generally accepted accounting 

 2 principles. 

 3 That is a result of many, many years of flawed 

 4 accounting for business combinations. It is the absence of 

 5 intangible assets, the limitations of the historical cost 

 6 model. Put all those pieces together, we couldn't fix the 

 7 balance sheet in 12 months or even come up with meaningful 

 8 recommendations so I would urge that we, as Bob has 

 9 suggested, focus our attention. Likewise footnotes, a 

 10 statement of comprehensive income and so on have a lot more 

 11 work to be done with them than we could possibly take on 

 12 during the time frame that we have in mind. 

 13 I do think the place that we can give some very 

 14 serious attention and develop some meaningful recommendations 

 15 is the financial information which flows from -- it is not 

 16 the income statement, it's not the cash flow statement, but 

 17 it is the financial information that flows from those 

 18 statements and makes its way to the investor community 

 19 through two other processes. And I think these are the most 

 20 important financial communications today and the ones where 

 21 our attention would be best focused. 

 22 One is MD&A. MD&A, notwithstanding the 

 23 considerable efforts of the SEC, still is burdened by 

 24 excessive amounts of legalisms and legal discussion and 

 25 boilerplate. But notwithstanding that general limitation 
Page 33 

 1 there is a lot of very meaningful information in the MD&A 

 2 that tells people about the business and the future of the 

 3 business and the liquidity in capital and things of that type 

 4 that they would not be able to discern from the basic 

 5 financial statements. 

 6 The information about important estimates and 

 7 judgments and critical accounting policies is very useful, 

 8 culls out the important from all the details that you find in 

 9 the footnotes and says, this is what really matters to this 

 10 company in preparing its financial reports. 

 11 MD&A, I applaud it, and I think we could give that 

 12 some attention. I think the clear winner in the financial 

 13 reporting sweepstakes today is the earnings release. This to 

 14 me is where the companies that I am familiar with anyway 

 15 provide the real information that is indispensable to the 

 16 investor community. 

 17 The earnings release moves the market, often moves 

 18 the market, often because it includes guidance. That's an 

 19 entirely different subject, but it is rare in my recent 

 20 experience that all of the GAAP-based compliance type 

 21 financial reporting moves anything other than just confirming 

 22 the information that has been previously issued through the 

 23 earnings release process. 

 24 And here companies seek to put forth as best they 

 25 can, and it is their best foot forward. I can say that as 
Page 34 

 1 well. 

 2 What they believe is meaningful information about 

 3 period to period performance of the business that can be used 

 4 to understand the core and could hopefully be used to predict 

 5 the future -- and this means culling out nonrecurring items, 

 6 irrelevant items, trying to make period-to-period analyses 

 7 comparable, and then in combination with what I think is of 

 8 great importance, business performance metrics and 

 9 indicators, when that is combined with adjusted financial 

 10 information in an earnings release you have what I believe is 

 11 really a very meaningful financial communication. 

 12 The question, you might ask, is are audit 

 13 committees paying enough attention to those communications? 

 14 Are the rules that govern those communications sufficient? 

 15 Is there value to be had by having auditors involvement with 

 16 those communications as opposed to the historical financial 

 17 statements? What should those performance indicators be? 

 18 How can they be defined? It is not necessarily where the 

 19 attention is being given from a control and standards and 

 20 process standpoint, but it is what really does make a 

 21 difference. 

 22 So I would just close with a thought I've expressed 

 23 in forums like this elsewhere, which is kind of my view of 

 24 the irony of Sarbanes-Oxley and everything that came with it 

 25 and 404 perhaps in particular is -- everything about 
Page 35 

 1 Sarbanes-Oxley has to do with playing defense. Everything 

 2 has to do with auditing and internal control and 

 3 whistleblowing and certifications, everything to protect the 

 4 integrity of the basic financial reporting package during a 

 5 period of time in which that basic financial reporting 

 6 package has declined in value, and I would say declined 

 7 rapidly in value in terms of its usefulness to the people who 

 8 rely on financial communications. 

 9 So I have said, gee, it's time to let the defense 

 10 take a rest, get the defense off the field and let's play 

 11 offense. Let's see what we can do to improve financial 

 12 reporting, which is what I think this group is all about. So 

 13 I say I'm delighted to be a part of the offense. I will try 

 14 not to be too offensive in doing it, but I think there is 

 15 great opportunity for us to do things that will really 

 16 enhance financial reporting and make all that effort that 

 17 we're spending on Sarbanes-Oxley and 404 and everything else 

 18 worthwhile because we'll be protecting something that really 

 19 matters. 

 20 Thanks, Bob. 

 21 MR. POZEN: Thank you. And Denny, I think you'll be 

 22 glad to know that there was some football learning here to be 

 23 gained about defense and offense. I'm sure you'll convey 

 24 that to your friends there in Georgia. 

 25 Now we have Jeffrey Diermeier. Jeffrey is 
Page 36 

 1 president and CEO of the CFA Institute. This is the 

 2 Institute for Certified Financial Analysts. And before he 

 3 took that position he was the global CIO for UBS Global Asset 

 4 Management. 

 5 So he is a very well positioned spokesman for the 

 6 equity analysts who are surely one of the most sophisticated 

 7 users of financial statements. 

 8 Thank you, Jeffrey. 

 9 MR. DIERMEIER: Mr. Chairman, fellow committee 

 10 members, distinguished guests, Chairman Cox for nominating 

 11 me, thank you very much. 

 12 So Mike, would this be the West Coast offense that 

 13 we're trying to do here? A little run and gun? 

 14 Complexity, according to Webster's definition 

 15 number two involves that which is hard to separate, analyze 

 16 or solve. Simplicity, which is the black sheep of the 

 17 complexity family, is, according to their definition number 

 18 one, the state of being simple, uncomplicated or 

 19 uncompounded. Uncompounded, interesting word. 

 20 It is my sincere pleasure to serve on this advisory 

 21 committee as a representative of investment professionals for 

 22 the purpose of putting forth recommendations to make 

 23 financial reporting as uncomplicated and uncompounded as is 

 24 practical. 

 25 I believe in the background section of the draft, 
Page 37 

 1 Mr. Chairman, we should acknowledge several points. First, 

 2 we know there are limits of course to reducing complexity. 

 3 Corporate activities can be hard to analyze, particularly 

 4 when derivatives or other complex financial instruments are 

 5 utilized for hedging or even non-hedging purposes or when 

 6 firms, because of their origins or cultures have unique ways 

 7 to describe something that is inherently the same. 

 8 Where complexity is a natural result of business 

 9 processes, it may be that disclosure is the only effective 

 10 antidote. 

 11 Second, another critical driver of complexity in 

 12 our system, and this is particularly relevant to something 

 13 like CFA Institute where most of our candidates -- excuse me, 

 14 right now we have more candidates in Asia than in the United 

 15 States -- is globalization. 

 16 Back to our earlier definitions. If companies 

 17 around the world had multiple reporting standards the 

 18 difficulty in performing analysis or in multiple preparations 

 19 is compounded. Comparisons can become challenged. 

 20 Investing is an act of relative comparisons. Over 

 21 my 30 years in the profession I have tried but failed to 

 22 understand what absolute value would be without reference to 

 23 a set of comparisons or benchmarks. The draft paper, 

 24 discussion paper we are commenting on today does a very fine 

 25 job of laying out, I think, the five major items that the 
Page 38 

 1 advisory committee should address. It is as comprehensive as 

 2 it is ambitious. 

 3 The focus is on economic fundamentals. The 

 4 statement that the two primary groups whose needs are 

 5 addressed in financial reporting -- namely preparers and 

 6 users -- is well put. The idea of setting these groups down 

 7 in a best efforts basis where lobbying is minimized is 

 8 important. I would offer two comments in that regard on that 

 9 part of the draft. 

 10 First, the notion that preparers should want to 

 11 reduce earnings volatility must be carefully interpreted. A 

 12 key principle of risk management is that one does not 

 13 artificially smooth those items that are inherently not 

 14 smooth -- doing so invites excessive risk taking in what is 

 15 called tail risk, and I know for a lot of time a lot of 

 16 companies have been taught or told that it's important for 

 17 them to reduce volatility, and they should try to reduce the 

 18 business volatility but not the face volatility. 

 19 Second, users of financial statements also want 

 20 information at reasonable costs. Despite a seemingly 

 21 insatiable appetite for information from people like me, 

 22 investors do not, as a general principle wish to burden firms 

 23 with wasteful or expensive activities. A true owner would 

 24 set out to achieve a proper balance. 

 25 I'd like to highlight some thoughts with regard to 
Page 39 

 1 the five subcommittees. As regards delivering financial 

 2 information, I suggest that the current business reporting 

 3 model should be reviewed to include a set of primary 

 4 financial statements that are cohesive and aligned with each 

 5 other. That is, items reported on the income and cash flow 

 6 statements could be specifically linked or aligned with those 

 7 items reported on the balance sheet, although I give pause 

 8 after hearing Mike's comments about the state of the balance 

 9 sheet today. 

 10 In addition, sufficiently disaggregated information 

 11 could be reported to enable end users to discern and 

 12 understand different economic activities. Such information 

 13 would include management's discussion and analysis of 

 14 financial and nonfinancial information, including key 

 15 performance indicators. Properly tagged, this detailed, 

 16 cohesive information could be easily accessed using 

 17 technology like XBRL. 

 18 XBRL looks like a good tool that if properly 

 19 executed allowing for comparability across firms could be of 

 20 great use. 

 21 In terms of substantive complexity there is a base 

 22 appeal to the notion that standards would require the same 

 23 measurement and recognition attributes for economically 

 24 similar transactions and activities. As a principle, 

 25 shouldn't accounting options be limited based on the 
Page 40 

 1 economics? 

 2 As to audit process and compliance, the movement to 

 3 principles-based standards is promising. Inherently 

 4 professional judgment becomes a recurring part of the 

 5 measurement and reporting process. Can't standard setters 

 6 develop and promote a clear distinction between judgment and 

 7 accounting choices? Could the need for bright lines and 

 8 prescriptive rules disappear as standards based on principles 

 9 accompanied by appropriate guidance are introduced? 

 10 Finally, in terms of the standard-setting process 

 11 which ultimately provides the long-term framework that I 

 12 think Mike was mentioning, I'd offer two comments. First, 

 13 the least complex approach from a user or preparer 

 14 standpoint, but certainly not from the standard setter's 

 15 standpoint, would be to have one single global standard 

 16 setter -- but because we're trying to be practical -- or its 

 17 nearest equivalent. 

 18 Second, the standard setter should engage in a 

 19 proper balance by inviting the primary preparers and users as 

 20 well as the secondary groups mentioned, to provide the 

 21 intellectual and experiential diversity like in this 

 22 committee to ensure optimal decision making. 

 23 I look forward to working with the distinguished 

 24 members of this committee as we attack the issues involved 

 25 here today. Thank you. 
Page 41 

 1 MR. POZEN: Well, thank you very much, Jeff. 

 2 That's a very wholesome explanation and you're representing 

 3 well the group of analysts who have the "insatiable appetite 

 4 for information." And I think they were very helpful 

 5 comments. 

 6 We're now going to move to another committee member 

 7 from the investor side, Scott Evans, who is executive vice 

 8 president of TIAA-CREF. They are one of the largest pension 

 9 funds in the United States, managing over $380 billion in 

 10 assets. And Mr. Evans is well versed in investments and 

 11 manages a big group there and I think is familiar with the 

 12 general viewpoint of pension funds in this respect. 

 13 Scott, give us some remarks. 

 14 MR. EVANS: Thanks very much, Bob. Thanks for 

 15 having me on this committee. I'd like to thank you and 

 16 Chairman Cox for giving me the opportunity to represent the 

 17 nation's pension funds in this important advisory committee. 

 18 As stewards of the long-term savings of millions of 

 19 working Americans, pension funds serve a vital role in 

 20 providing long-term investment capital to public companies. 

 21 At my employer, TIAA-CREF, we manage the savings of 3.5 

 22 million participants in the academic, medical, cultural and 

 23 research fields. 

 24 Like most pension funds we act in the direct 

 25 interest of the beneficiaries that we serve in the capital 
Page 42 

 1 markets. Pension funds represent the quintessential 

 2 long-term owner for whom our system of public financial 

 3 reporting is designed. 

 4 The FASB in its 2006 release, Conceptual Framework 

 5 for Financial Reporting, states that the objective of 

 6 financial reporting is to provide information that's useful 

 7 to present for potential investors and creditors and others 

 8 in making investment, credit and similar resource allocation 

 9 decisions. 

 10 Since most institutional owners of public companies 

 11 do not hold controlling stakes, we're dependent on management 

 12 to communicate with us through the regulated medium of 

 13 published financial reports and other public documents. As 

 14 professional investors with a long-time horizon we are 

 15 capable of making our own judgments and forecasts regarding 

 16 future cash flows. However we expect company managements who 

 17 act as our agents to communicate to us what they know. 

 18 It is far more important to us that disclosures 

 19 enable shareholders to see the company through the eyes of 

 20 management than that they strictly conform to a particular 

 21 accounting theory or concept, for instance rules versus 

 22 principles, stewardship versus decision usefulness. Although 

 23 we're agnostic about these theoretical distinctions, we are 

 24 passionate in our desire to improve the formal communication 

 25 from company management to their owners. 
Page 43 

 1 Specifically we're hoping that this committee will 

 2 rise above the temptation to focus narrowly on intellectual 

 3 debate and seek instead to create a constructive climate 

 4 where all interested parties work together to continually 

 5 improve by testing and modifying approaches where necessary 

 6 in an attempt to achieve consensus on taking practical 

 7 forward steps toward our common goal of improved financial 

 8 reporting. 

 9 As we embark on this year-long mission, I suggest 

 10 that we keep several universal objectives in mind to test the 

 11 relevancy of our suggested improvements. And I have five 

 12 plays that I'd like to suggest for our West Coast offense 

 13 here. 

 14 The first is transparency. As the steward of our 

 15 assets, management should communicate what it knows about 

 16 past and future state of company affairs to its shareholders. 

 17 This communication need not be confined to financial 

 18 statements but it must be timely and equally available to all 

 19 shareholders. 

 20 The second is simplicity. Descriptions should be 

 21 easily understood by nonprofessionals. Now as a Nobel prize 

 22 winning former trustee at TIAA-CREF said to me just as I was 

 23 about to talk to him about finance -- this guy was a 

 24 scientist -- he said, "the greatest professors can always 

 25 explain their work, no matter how complex, to any person, no 
Page 44 

 1 matter what their background." Corporate managements should 

 2 be able to pass this same simple test. 

 3 The third play is consistency. Communications 

 4 should be consistent from one period to the next. 

 5 Comparability, users should be able to compare one 

 6 company's disclosures to those of users in similar fields of 

 7 enterprise. All attempts should be made to fully utilize 

 8 technology like XBRL, to make data available in standard 

 9 format for quick and efficient dissemination and analysis. 

 10 And last but certainly not least, accountability. 

 11 Because of the separation of ownership and control, managers 

 12 of public companies are accountable to those who own the 

 13 capital. Owners deserve to have enough information to 

 14 evaluate the effectiveness with which their capital is being 

 15 managed and at the same time management needs to be free to 

 16 communicate their story in their own words. Overly 

 17 prescriptive reporting requirements may serve to undermine 

 18 the effectiveness of this communication. 

 19 I look forward to working with this esteemed group 

 20 over the next 12 months, to recommend solid and lasting 

 21 improvements in the reporting mechanisms that managers and 

 22 owners use to communicate with each other. Thank you very 

 23 much. 

 24 MR. POZEN: Thank you. 

 25 Now we move to the next person on our list, who is 
Page 45 

 1 Linda Griggs. Linda is a partner currently at Morgan Lewis, 

 2 a Washington law firm. She also was at one time Chief 

 3 Counsel in the Office of Chief Accountant, so we're glad to 

 4 have you, Linda. 

 5 MS. GRIGGS: Thank you, Bob. I appreciate being 

 6 named to this committee to represent securities lawyers. I 

 7 also serve as chair of the law and accounting committee of 

 8 the American Bar Association, so I expect to be able to use 

 9 that committee to assist me in this endeavor. 

 10 I commend the Commission for forming this advisory 

 11 committee. The financial reporting system in the United 

 12 States has played a critical role in the making of the 

 13 capital markets of the United States, highly credible, 

 14 efficient and effective. 

 15 While our financial reporting system has been a 

 16 gold standard, as Conrad mentioned, during the last 10 years 

 17 financial statements have become increasingly difficult to 

 18 prepare and to understand. These changes have resulted at 

 19 least in part from the increasing trend towards value-based 

 20 accounting, the clamor for more objective accounting rules to 

 21 confront our litigious society and increasing complexity of 

 22 transactions, including transactions involving multiple 

 23 elements, requiring significant analysis to determine the 

 24 timing of recognition and complicated products designed by 

 25 ingenious investment bankers to address companies' economic 
Page 46 

 1 or financial needs. 

 2 For several years regulators, standard setters, 

 3 accountants, investors and academics have expressed concern 

 4 about the increasing complexity of accounting standards. 

 5 Some have also questioned whether reported financial 

 6 information continues to be useful and to reflect economic 

 7 reality. 

 8 In an effort to reduce complexity the FASB has 

 9 begun to adopt principles-based accounting standards. SFAS 

 10 159, which permits companies to elect the fair value method 

 11 of accounting for certain financial instruments is a recent 

 12 example of a principles-based standard. But some registrants 

 13 fail to understand those principles when they tried to 

 14 implement FAS 159 and perhaps some of that failure to 

 15 understand was because it's difficult to articulate 

 16 principles. 

 17 Principles-based accounting standards requires an 

 18 enormous effort by the standard setters to really articulate 

 19 those standards in a way that people can interpret and 

 20 follow. I believe that it is appropriate and timely for a 

 21 thorough examination of ways to ensure that our financial 

 22 reporting system continues to provide transparent and 

 23 meaningful information to both preparers and users of that 

 24 information without adversely affecting the ability of 

 25 publicly held companies to compete in the global market. 
Page 47 

 1 The scope of the review contemplated for this 

 2 committee is broad, perhaps impossibly so, but I believe it 

 3 is consistent with the seriousness with which the commission 

 4 views its mission of ensuring appropriate financial 

 5 disclosures. I personally believe that our consideration of 

 6 the benefits and disadvantages of the mixed attribute 

 7 financial statements is crucial to rationalizing and 

 8 increasing the transparency of our financial reporting 

 9 system. 

 10 The establishment of a new value-based financial 

 11 statement is an option that I think we should carefully 

 12 consider. I also think we should consider whether there are 

 13 ways to provide more meaningful financial information to 

 14 investors. For example, should the financial disclosure rely 

 15 more on information about the financial elements of business 

 16 transactions rather than on the single bottom-line effect of 

 17 those transactions and should the Commission's rules 

 18 encourage or perhaps even require that the information in 

 19 those press releases which, I agree with Mike Cook, have 

 20 become increasingly the method by which managements tell 

 21 their story? Should that information be required in SEC 

 22 filings instead of now where there's almost an apparent 

 23 discouragement of non-GAAP financial information to be in 

 24 public filings? 

 25 Finally, no consideration of improvements to 
Page 48 

 1 financial reporting can ignore revenue recognition. One of 

 2 the areas that has resulted in considerable enforcement 

 3 action and may account for some problems for companies trying 

 4 to compete in the global marketplace -- and I think we also 

 5 need to look at the reasons for and the appropriateness for 

 6 all of those restatements, the 10 percent of the financial 

 7 statements that have been restated in the last year. 

 8 I look forward to working with Bob Pozen and the 

 9 other members of the committee and the Commission Chief 

 10 Accountant and Director of the Division of Corporation 

 11 Finance and their staffs as well as the observers to the 

 12 committee from the FASB, the PCAOB, the IASB, the Treasury 

 13 and the Federal Reserve. 

 14 I think we can work on recommendations to improve 

 15 the financial reporting system, and I look forward to this 

 16 work. Thank you, Bob. 

 17 MR. POZEN: Thank you, Linda, for your intelligent 

 18 and very thoughtful comments. I should have mentioned that 

 19 you were head of the law and accounting committee at the ABA. 

 20 I'm sorry I neglected that. 

 21 Now we have Joe Grundfest. Joe is, besides being a 

 22 personal friend of mine, a distinguished professor at 

 23 Stanford Law and Business. He's codirector of the Rock 

 24 Center on Corporate Governance. He served four years as an 

 25 SEC commissioner and he is likely to spark the most 
Page 49 

 1 discussions by a few very interesting remarks. 

 2 MR. GRUNDFEST: Interesting is always an interesting 

 3 word in that context. 

 4 So let me begin, Bob, with two rhetorical questions 

 5 that I offer for the purpose of perspective, and I'd like to 

 6 pose to all of my fellow panelists. First question, who 

 7 among us can name the great -- the truly great federal 

 8 advisory act committees of all time? Okay. Second 

 9 question -- my point, all right. Second, which committees 

 10 have advanced the ball to make meaningful and lasting 

 11 contributions and how and why? 

 12 Aha. My guess is that the vast majority of us 

 13 can't think of a single federal advisory committee act 

 14 committee that has actually made a meaningful and lasting and 

 15 long-term contribution, and I suggest that we contemplate the 

 16 reason why that is the case, we learn from that history and 

 17 we do what we can, which may or may not be very much, to do 

 18 our best to avoid that destiny. 

 19 And I think one of the important prescriptions that 

 20 we need to follow is along the lines of one of Bob's favorite 

 21 sayings here, is that we can't let the perfect be the enemy 

 22 of the good, that I do think we have to be very focused and 

 23 pragmatic in terms of what it is we're attempting to 

 24 accomplish. I think it is improbable that we will be able to 

 25 solve all of the world's problems in 12 months through this 
Page 50 

 1 committee, but I think it would be wonderful if we could 

 2 advance the ball in an effective and pragmatic and doable 

 3 way. 

 4 In other words, if we set the bar for ourselves low 

 5 enough we will succeed, all right. And I strongly recommend 

 6 that we have very, very -- from that perspective, low but 

 7 useful expectations of ourselves. 

 8 Now with that by way of a rhetorical introduction, 

 9 let me share with you one procedural suggestion and then five 

 10 substantive observations. First a procedural suggestion. 

 11 We are not the fount of all knowledge and wisdom 

 12 with regard to the issues that we are going to address. I 

 13 understand that we have a web page, and that's really very 

 14 lickety split and very nice. I think we need to figure out 

 15 some way to make it easy to have people who are knowledgeable 

 16 and want to share their views about the topics that we're 

 17 wrestling with, share those views with us, whether that's 

 18 some kind of incoming feature, setting up a blog, what have 

 19 you. 

 20 We can all talk about that. But there are lots of 

 21 other professors, students, knowledgeable people out there 

 22 who probably have good ideas that they want to share with us 

 23 about topics we're wrestling with. You know, my view is 

 24 let's open it up. Anybody who's got a good idea, I want to 

 25 hear it, and I want to figure out what we can do in order to 
Page 51 

 1 incorporate those ideas. So opening the tent that way I 

 2 think is really going to be very important. 

 3 In terms of five areas where I think we can really 

 4 make substantive contributions within that year and maybe go 

 5 down as one of the great federal advisory act committees of 

 6 all time -- the hall of fame. Remember, it's a small hall of 

 7 not very much fame, all right; we'll call it the hall of 

 8 non-ignominy. 

 9 The five substantive areas are in the following 

 10 regions. One, probability. Two, technology. Three, 

 11 liability. Four, theology. And five, formality. Very 

 12 briefly. 

 13 First, probability. It is true that you cannot 

 14 take a clear picture of a fuzzy object, yet financial 

 15 statements repeatedly call for point estimates of probability 

 16 distributions, therefore by definition financial statements 

 17 always force you to lie, all right. 

 18 Take the simplest example, cash. How much cash do 

 19 you have? Well, if you're in a big organization you can come 

 20 up with a pretty tight point estimate of how much cash you 

 21 have, but it's really a probability distribution with a very 

 22 small variance. What are your securities worth? Well, 

 23 you're forced to give a point estimate of a probability 

 24 distribution. Depending upon the kind of security it's 

 25 either a tight variance or a huge variance. We have no 
Page 52 

 1 mechanism for honestly describing the uncertainty that 

 2 pervades all of these numbers. 

 3 Forgive me, that's preposterous. We're forcing 

 4 people to give false representations of reality. We need a 

 5 way to describe the probability estimates that are inherent 

 6 not in some of these numbers but in all of these numbers. 

 7 Second, technology. We've heard for years now 

 8 about the potential value of XBRL and there are situations 

 9 where XBRL is being picked up and is being used to very great 

 10 advantage. The banking industry where, number one, you've 

 11 got highly standardized numbers, and number two the numbers 

 12 are mandated. XBRL is not being picked up in the rest of the 

 13 environment at any sort of meaningful pace at all. 

 14 XBRL is currently I think headed towards the fate 

 15 of Esperanto, a better language that nobody speaks, all 

 16 right. What we need to do is figure out how to handle the 

 17 Esperanto problem for XBRL, and those of us who come from 

 18 Silicon Valley and the software world, there's lots of great 

 19 technology that never winds being picked up and adopted 

 20 because it fails the marketing test. 

 21 XBRL is a marketing failure and a technological 

 22 success. There are ways I think to go about turning it into 

 23 a marketing success and I think what we need to do is have 

 24 this committee look at ways to jump start adoption in that 

 25 space. 
Page 53 

 1 Third, liability. If you think that the financial 

 2 reporting process is not conducted with everybody looking 

 3 over their shoulders and thinking about the possibility of 

 4 being sued by the SEC or private class action litigation or 

 5 what have you, you simply don't understand the reality. 

 6 The definition of GAAP that was earlier 

 7 offered -- rules you need to follow even though they don't 

 8 make sense because otherwise you will go to jail -- is a 

 9 pretty good operative definition of GAAP because it's hard to 

 10 explain them through any other coherent logical process. To 

 11 the extent that this committee can help provide the judicial 

 12 process with a better understanding of what's important and 

 13 what's not important so that we can really drive meaningful 

 14 information and take the liability second guessing out of the 

 15 process -- I think that would be a great advantage. 

 16 Fourth point, theology; rules versus principles. 

 17 Forgive me, but give me a break, all right. The reality is 

 18 sometimes rules are best, sometimes rules are absolutely 

 19 necessary. Other times standards are best. Sometimes 

 20 standards are necessary because you really can't write rules. 

 21 It's also true that standards often as they are 

 22 applied devolve into rules. Easy example, take the most 

 23 standard-based principle in the law, the notion of a 

 24 fiduciary standard. Well, you look at the Delaware 

 25 jurisprudence applying the fiduciary standard to takeovers 
Page 54 

 1 and you realize that when it comes to breakup fees that 

 2 standard has devolved into a rule, but if you keep the fee at 

 3 less than three percent you're generally okay. You apply a 

 4 standard often enough it generates a set of rules. 

 5 I think our goal here should be to try to get past 

 6 the rules-principles rhetoric because I don't think it gets 

 7 us anywhere and to try to explain when you use rules, when 

 8 you use standards and how standards can intelligently be 

 9 applied. And this is an area that of course feeds back into 

 10 the question of liability in a very important way. 

 11 Last and maybe most important, the whole issue of 

 12 formality. And by formality I mean the distinction between 

 13 recognition and disclosure. Recognition means you got to 

 14 take a number and you've got to plug it into these GAAP 

 15 financial statements. Disclosure means you can take the 

 16 number and disclose it in the footnotes or someplace else in 

 17 the SEC filings. 

 18 Ladies and gentlemen, the reality is that some of 

 19 the biggest battles arise when you move from disclosure to 

 20 formal recognition. Once you go from disclosing the 

 21 information, whether it's in MD&A, to forcing it to flow 

 22 through the income statement. 

 23 There are ways, I think, where we can increase the 

 24 credibility and the usefulness of nonrecognition items in a 

 25 manner that can help diffuse the politics of some of the 
Page 55 

 1 recognition process, can help address some of these issues. 

 2 And one question that I do think is fair for us to consider 

 3 is whether we're asking the financial reporting process as 

 4 formally defined by GAAP to do too much, for it to be 

 5 answering to too many different masters and for it to 

 6 actually try to estimate the real economic value of the 

 7 business. 

 8 I don't think that that can be done. And if you 

 9 ask somebody to do something that's impossible the odds are 

 10 they will fail. And I think by setting that set of standards 

 11 and objectives for the formal recognition reporting process 

 12 we're putting our brethren in the accounting profession in a 

 13 very, very difficult position because we're asking them to do 

 14 something which has to fail. 

 15 So let me close very briefly by saying there have 

 16 been several references to the West Coast offense. As a 

 17 representative of Stanford where we lost Coach Walsh who is 

 18 the inventor of the West Coast offense, let's remember the 

 19 basic football philosophy -- short passes down the field with 

 20 higher probability of success, that's what I suggest. If we 

 21 complete these five relatively short passes we can score some 

 22 points. Thank you. 

 23 MR. POZEN: Thank you, Joe. We'll definitely take 

 24 your advice. 

 25 Now we have Greg Jonas. Greg is managing director 
Page 56 

 1 of Moody's, one of the most prominent credit rating agencies. 

 2 Before joining Moody's he was at an audit firm and he also 

 3 is -- at one point was executive director of the AICPA 

 4 special committee on financial reporting. So we are glad to 

 5 have Greg, who obviously has an interest in debt securities 

 6 as well as equity securities. Thank you. 

 7 MR. JONAS: Bob, thank you. I'd like to echo first 

 8 the comments that others have made about what a privilege it 

 9 is to serve on this committee, and I appreciate very much the 

 10 opportunity to do so. 

 11 Over the years I've had the pleasure of working 

 12 with and for many of the people who are at the table here 

 13 today, and I can assure all of you that I am by far not the 

 14 brightest person in the room. My only hope is that being 

 15 fairly simpleminded and deliberative about these things is 

 16 actually an advantage when you're thinking about taking 

 17 complexity out of a system. 

 18 I have been a student of financial reporting now 

 19 for -- I hate to admit it -- about 25 years, and I have never 

 20 seen, in that time period, such a critical time in the 

 21 history of financial reporting. I think there's four reasons 

 22 for this. 

 23 One is I've never seen a time when we have so many 

 24 big ticket fundamental issues that are in play in the 

 25 financial reporting system. For example, as we speak, 
Page 57 

 1 standards setters are debating what things get put on 

 2 financial statements, how we measure these things, when they 

 3 get taken off, how the display of financial statements ought 

 4 to look to the reader, whether we should set principles or 

 5 rules, and then throw in a couple minor little projects like 

 6 rethinking leasing accounting and pension accounting and then 

 7 some absolutely mind-numbing reconsideration of the 

 8 foundations on which our models are based. 

 9 The second reason why I think this is a critical 

 10 time is globalization of everything, including financial 

 11 reporting. And I think what globalization is doing is it's 

 12 calling in question the institutions that we have that were 

 13 built at a time when each country had their own structures 

 14 and their own institutions to support financial reporting. 

 15 And we are calling to question whether those institutions are 

 16 still relevant today. 

 17 A third reason why I think we are at a critical 

 18 juncture are all the changes in the economy that have 

 19 occurred over the last 25 years and among them globalization 

 20 of markets, technology and unprecedented level of innovation. 

 21 And the fourth reason I think we find ourselves at 

 22 this critical juncture, and frankly the critical reason why I 

 23 think we're gathered around this table, is the unprecedented 

 24 level of regulation in cost and weight that we have now 

 25 before us in the financial reporting system. 
Page 58 

 1 I think what's occurred is that we have made 

 2 improvement upon improvement upon improvement for 40 years 

 3 and we've never stepped back and said, "does it all make 

 4 sense in totality as a system?" 

 5 Two analogies come to mind. Many years ago I was 

 6 involved in shop floor layout design, and it would not be 

 7 uncommon to go to a factory floor and you'd absolutely see 

 8 literally a spaghetti diagram of processes and techniques in 

 9 place on the floor. And you ask, who would have designed 

 10 such a thing of spaghetti? And the answer is, no one 

 11 designed such a thing; it happened piece by piece by piece 

 12 with each piece being relevant and well intentioned but the 

 13 totality never being examined. 

 14 What we did in those days was eliminate, simplify 

 15 and focus as a means to then improve. It was a necessary 

 16 precedent to allow additional improvement -- was to take out 

 17 weight. 

 18 A second analogy that I have happened to me just 

 19 earlier this week, and we've all experienced this. You know, 

 20 your computer slows down. The darn thing doesn't go as fast 

 21 as it used to and it does it because your hard drive, I'm 

 22 told, gets all clogged up with stuff. And then you 

 23 got -- you're hanging on to too much stuff and so you got to 

 24 defrag the hard drive, whatever that does. I think it allows 

 25 the computer to put things in more efficient space. And then 
Page 59 

 1 you delete all your stuff that you don't need anymore. 

 2 And so I think, you know, we need to defrag here a 

 3 little bit, again, as a way to improve and make room for 

 4 improvement. And I believe we need improvement. 

 5 There are four areas that I think this committee 

 6 can add particular value. One is reducing complexity, and I 

 7 am most optimistic about our ability to do this because to my 

 8 knowledge no committee such as this has ever gathered 

 9 specifically to tackle that thorny issue. It has always been 

 10 an afterthought. 

 11 You know, everybody likes to reduce complexity, but 

 12 it has never been anybody's first job. This needs to be, in 

 13 my mind, job one. 

 14 Second opportunity for help is delivery. I really 

 15 think, because of technology, we can really improve how 

 16 investors access information in a manner where one size does 

 17 not fit all, which has been the traditional way we've 

 18 delivered financial information forever. 

 19 The third area I think we can add value here is by 

 20 making suggestions for a globalization of institutions 

 21 critical to the financial reporting process. This is all new 

 22 to all of us. Everybody is thinking about this now. The SEC 

 23 is going to get a mountain of input very soon on these 

 24 critical topics. I think we need to be a voice in that area 

 25 as well. 
Page 60 

 1 And then finally I believe we can help with what I 

 2 call excessive short-termism in the market. In my job at 

 3 Moody's I often find myself listening to companies present 

 4 their business plan to discuss their operations as they 

 5 update us on the status of their financial affairs, and it is 

 6 very, very often the case that at some point in the 

 7 conversation the company almost confesses, although they 

 8 don't mean it in that way, but it's kind of a shameful kind 

 9 of thing that they say I'm having to take some short-term 

 10 business actions that really are not in the long-term 

 11 interests of my business. 

 12 And I think I'm not one who says we need to shoot 

 13 the short-term investor. I think what makes a market is the 

 14 fact that there are short-term investors and long-term 

 15 investors. But I do believe that people tend to focus on the 

 16 short-term in large part because we are not giving them the 

 17 indicators that they need to really understand the value 

 18 creation process and how that relates to the long term. 

 19 So I greatly look forward to our many discussions 

 20 and working with this group, and hopefully I can add some 

 21 value along the way. Thank you, Bob. 

 22 MR. POZEN: Thank you. So we can defrag and 

 23 decipher. We now have Chris Liddell, who is the CFO of 

 24 Microsoft. Chris is responsible for Microsoft's worldwide 

 25 financial organization. Before joining Microsoft he was the 
Page 61 

 1 CFO of International Paper, and he also was chief executive 

 2 of Carter Holt, which is New Zealand's second largest listed 

 3 company. I say that because you'll notice that he has a 

 4 little bit of a Kiwi accent still in his presentation. Thank 

 5 you. 

 6 MR. LIDDELL: Thanks, Bob. I wanted to first 

 7 commend the SEC for bringing together a multi-disciplinary 

 8 group like this to address what I consider to be a critical 

 9 topic. I am personally delighted to be a member of the 

 10 Advisory Committee and believe we have an extremely important 

 11 task in recommending improvements to financial reporting. 

 12 As the background paper notes, the U.S. capital 

 13 markets are the deepest and most liquid in the world and we 

 14 have a collective responsibility as committee members over 

 15 and above our individual roles to ensure this leadership 

 16 position is retained. 

 17 Clearly, I do not want to prejudge any of the 

 18 recommendations; however, I do have some preliminary 

 19 observations. As chief financial officer of Microsoft, one 

 20 of my main responsibilities is to communicate with our 

 21 owners; and in doing so to ensure that our financial reports 

 22 reflect the economic substance of our business. 

 23 When reviewing the discussion paper, I was struck 

 24 by the fact that the need for financial reports to reflect 

 25 the economic substance of business was listed as an objective 
Page 62 

 1 for each of the participants in financial reporting, and I 

 2 fully endorse it as our primary objective. 

 3 I also agree with the other stated joint objectives 

 4 that all participants should want clear guidelines that allow 

 5 financial reports to be prepared and presented in a 

 6 straightforward fashion, do not want reports to be 

 7 subsequently deemed to be incorrect, and do not want 

 8 companies to spend too much money in management time in 

 9 preparing financial reports. 

 10 However, I see these as secondary and contributory 

 11 to the primary purpose of clearly and as accurately as 

 12 possible conveying economic substance. Further, what is 

 13 critical at all participants' interests should be considered, 

 14 my belief is that investors are the foremost group whose 

 15 interest should be optimized for, especially where interest 

 16 might conflict. I am an open advocate inside my company for 

 17 shareholder value, and never lose sight of the fact that they 

 18 are primarily to serve the interest of our shareholders. 

 19 I agree with the proposed areas of inquiry and the 

 20 subcommittee's structure and focus. In terms of approach to 

 21 what is clearly a diverse, complex, and multi-faceted 

 22 problem, I take the same approach that I would inside our 

 23 company and recommend a three-tier structure for our 

 24 recommendations. 

 25 The first tier is what I described as "no regrets 
Page 63 

 1 changes," which have relatively no implementation costs and 

 2 have a high degree of unanimity amongst the various 

 3 stakeholders and participants. The second tier would be more 

 4 ambitious changes that may have greater impact, but would 

 5 also possibly have more substantial transition issues and/or 

 6 suboptimal impact on some of the secondary stakeholders. 

 7 Lastly, I would put up what I described as game 

 8 changing ideas that may have significant implementation 

 9 issues and may require more study after the term of the 

 10 Committee, but which hold the promise of not only continuing 

 11 the U.S. capital market's current status, but in fact, 

 12 extending its leadership position. My only caution is that 

 13 any recommendations clearly consider any transition issues, 

 14 have a long-term approach, i.e. that they be sustainable over 

 15 a long period rather than be continually modified, and work 

 16 well both in concept and in practice. 

 17 For example, we should resist changes which have 

 18 the appearance of benefit, but whose costs are greater than 

 19 those benefits and hence are not only unsustainable, but also 

 20 not in the long-term interest of investors. Furthermore, all 

 21 companies, even large ones, do not have unlimited human or 

 22 financial resources. And, even if a recommended change 

 23 passes the cost-benefit test, it should pass the secondary 

 24 test as to whether it is the best use of those resources. 

 25 In terms of my role, I look forward to contributing 
Page 64 

 1 my experience, perspectives, and ideas to the Committee, and 

 2 once again thank you for the opportunity to participate. I 

 3 look forward to our further discussions. 

 4 Thank you. 

 5 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, Chris. 

 6 We now have remarks from Bill Mann. Bill is a 

 7 senior analyst at Motley Fool, which I think represents a 

 8 very important perspective of the individual investor and has 

 9 put out an investment newsletter through the web and are I 

 10 think very tuned in to some of the more recent developments 

 11 about the dissemination of information. 

 12 Thank you. 

 13 MR. MANN: I am also from North Carolina, which is 

 14 a basketball State. So if you all could explain to me the 

 15 football analogies later, I'd really appreciate, because they 

 16 are all just beyond me. 

 17 (Laughter.) 

 18 MR. MANN: Unlike most of the people here, my 

 19 primary access and use of accounting has been as a consumer 

 20 throughout my career and being at the Motley Fool and being 

 21 as someone who picks stocks and recommends stocks to 

 22 individuals, I see all the time the anxiety the people have 

 23 that things are being hidden from them, that things are not 

 24 being communicated, that managements are able again to hide 

 25 things in plain view. 
Page 65 

 1 I think a very important component of this 

 2 Committee, and it's been brought up a number of times, is 

 3 that financial transactions are simply more complex in 

 4 today's age. You know, I think as an allegory the 

 5 Declaration of Independence was written on a single page, 

 6 whereas, the regulations for footings or cement barriers in 

 7 Fairfax County run 40 pages, which unfortunately I now know a 

 8 lot about. 

 9 One of the interesting things -- we are in a fairly 

 10 unique time. And the Motley Fool has been a company that has 

 11 taken advantage of it and I believe has really assisted 

 12 individual investors. And that is the rise of technology. 

 13 If you think 15 years ago we had very limited access to 

 14 documents, I think the technology has increased people's 

 15 access to information. 

 16 But, I don't think it has increased people's levels 

 17 of understanding of the financial documents or the 

 18 information that's supposed to be put forth. I think that 

 19 we're missing an opportunity to communicate to owners in a 

 20 way that's useful to them and so I am delighted to that end 

 21 to see the scope of Section 4 of our recommendations or of 

 22 the position paper. Here's why. 

 23 We do a number of surveys and we've seen this over 

 24 time; that less than 30% of all individual investors bother 

 25 to read the annual reports of the companies that they own. I 
Page 66 

 1 actually think that the number is a little bit lower because 

 2 even in an anonymous survey it's probably a little bit 

 3 embarrassing to say that you do no more research on the 

 4 companies that you own than you would the television that is 

 5 in your living room. This to me is just horrifying. 

 6 In my role in speaking to our five million members 

 7 and readers and people who access information through the 

 8 Motley Fool, I wish I could say that I've received a lot of 

 9 recommendations from individual investors about what would 

 10 make the financial statements more useful. But I really 

 11 haven't. Instead, I have a message that individual investors 

 12 have in some ways given up. 

 13 There's a lot of cynicism. The companies are 

 14 hiding things. This doesn't help any of us in the capital 

 15 markets. One individual investor who I think a great deal of 

 16 is named Michelle Leder. She writes a web site called, 

 17 "footnoted.org." Basically, she finds opportunities and 

 18 pitfalls in businesses by combing through the footnotes of 

 19 financial statements. She's very good at what she does. And 

 20 when I asked her about some of the things that would make 

 21 financial reporting more simple, she said, "It would be 

 22 simple. All you need to do is put me out of business. I 

 23 should not have to do what I do." 

 24 Individual investors are not financial 

 25 professionals by and large. That said, many of them are 
Page 67 

 1 extremely sophisticated. I think it's folly though to think 

 2 that any investor is going to read a 500-page 10K, which many 

 3 companies now are routinely turning out. I think that there 

 4 is an enormous gap between the press releases, which, as has 

 5 been mentioned, is the thing that tends to move the market 

 6 and the filings themselves. 

 7 I think the SEC did a very smart thing a few years 

 8 ago in reminding companies that they are liable for 

 9 misstatements or for fraud in their press releases. However, 

 10 one of my colleagues still describes company press releases 

 11 as a game of fetch; as in, here's the ball, don't look 

 12 anywhere else. 

 13 We have a tremendous opportunity here with this 

 14 panel, particularly with the MD&A section of 10Ks. As part 

 15 of the formal financial filing, it's an area where 

 16 managements need to know that they have a lower level of 

 17 legal liability than they do for say the audited financials. 

 18 So I think about the comments that Mr. Cook made about the 

 19 balance sheet. How helpful would it be for investors if 

 20 management had the ability to give their own informative 

 21 opinion of the current value of its assets in the context of 

 22 the MD&A. 

 23 So, it's a delight for me to be here and I am 

 24 honored to be working with this Advisory Committee. 

 25 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, very much, Bill. 
Page 68 

 1 We now will hear from Ed McClammy. Ed is CFO and 

 2 Treasurer of Variant, which is global technology located in 

 3 Palo Alto. He's also served at the other companies, Quantum 

 4 and Lucky Stores, and at one time worked for an accounting 

 5 firm. He is representing mid-size companies. 

 6 Thank you, Ed. 

 7 MR. MCCLAMMY: Thanks, Bob. 

 8 I'm pleased to be representing small and mid-sized 

 9 companies on the Committee. Clearly, I feel that the small 

 10 and mid-sized preparers have suffered probably the most 

 11 burden from the increased complexity of the financial 

 12 statements. And also coming from the perspective that I have 

 13 a background dealing with most of the elements in developing 

 14 the financial statements and started my career with the FASB. 

 15 So I've been on the standard setting side with a major 

 16 auditing firm and a preparer, and as an individual investor, 

 17 at least, from the investor perspective. 

 18 So, primarily coming from today, I could talk about 

 19 this for hours coming from a mid-sized complex company that's 

 20 had to deal with the complexities. 

 21 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, we're not going to give you 

 22 a few hours. Let's have the shortened version. 

 23 (Laughter.) 

 24 MR. MCCLAMMY: I probably won't even take my five 

 25 minutes today, so, just a couple of points that I want to 
Page 69 

 1 make. And when I think GAAP is being set by too many 

 2 sources, clearly the amount and complexity of items that are 

 3 coming out of the FASB, the emerging issues task force and 

 4 the SEC from a formal basis have grown. But there's also, 

 5 I'll put "GAAP" in quotes. There's also "GAAP" being 

 6 generated, whether intended or otherwise, through SEC comment 

 7 letters, either from and I say intended from sending messages 

 8 or from people reacting to a comment for expediency sake in 

 9 getting a filing done or otherwise, where I think they're 

 10 agreeing. 

 11 And it may not have even been a point the SEC was 

 12 making. Personally, I think in a lot of cases, it was 

 13 probably just a question that people are adopting, and the 

 14 major accounting firms are spreading through their 

 15 organization: here is the SEC's thinking. If you don't want 

 16 to comment, you should adopt this either in your disclosures 

 17 or in your accounting. 

 18 So I think there's a lot of "GAAP" being created 

 19 through that process and in addition to that we now have the 

 20 Oversight Board, who I think again intended or otherwise are 

 21 through their review processes creating GAAP from comments 

 22 that they raised. That the accounting firms then roll out 

 23 and say, we need to adopt this as a standard for "GAAP," or 

 24 the firm could have a problem when the Oversight Board comes 

 25 in for the next review. 
Page 70 

 1 So I think there's a clear sign of complexity that 

 2 comes out of all of this when we ask accounting firms for 

 3 advice on an accounting issue; and the local partners who 

 4 deal with this all the time cannot give us an answer. They 

 5 either have to go back to a subject matter expert or they 

 6 have to go back to the home office. And I think through that 

 7 process of going back to those people, we talked about having 

 8 a view on the economic reality or reasonableness. 

 9 I think it turns into more conservatism as you go 

 10 through that process, and we lose some of the economic 

 11 reality as we go through it. Because all of a sudden 

 12 everyone becomes concerned about being second guessed as they 

 13 go through various review processes or being sued if 

 14 something turns out to be different than the most likely 

 15 outcome. 

 16 For an example of where I think second guessing has 

 17 come in, I remember when I was in public accounting and 

 18 helped companies prepare 10Qs, and they may have been five or 

 19 ten or maybe even 15 pages long. They were very easy to pick 

 20 up either the one you were looking at, or from a CFO's 

 21 perspective to pick up the 10Q from a competitor or some 

 22 other industry we were looking at getting involved in, and to 

 23 fairly quickly get an update to what had been in the 10K. 

 24 And I think nowadays, because of all the second 

 25 guessing and different requirements, it is more difficult 
Page 71 

 1 today to get through a 10Q than it was to get through a 10K 

 2 several years ago, which I think is a reason why more of the 

 3 10Qs and 10Ks are going in the trash can than are being read. 

 4 I think the other thing this complexity has led to is more 

 5 people relying on earnings releases, investor conference 

 6 calls, and also relying more on an adjusted non-"GAAP" 

 7 information than on "GAAP" information and SEC filings. 

 8 Several committee members have said, I think people 

 9 feel like they get more reasonable, useful information from 

 10 those sources, and more timely than they do out of the SEC 

 11 filings with formal "GAAP" technical answers. So I think 

 12 this is a clear indication that we have a problem and that 

 13 the problem needs to be addressed. And I am pleased to be 

 14 part of that. 

 15 Thanks, Bob. 

 16 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, thank you, Ed, for your very 

 17 specific and concrete remarks. I tend to agree with you a 

 18 lot that we have probably too much of GAAP running around and 

 19 we need to sort of figure out what is and isn't GAAP and grab 

 20 hold of it. 

 21 Now we have Ed Nusbaum. Ed is CEO of Grant 

 22 Thornton. Sometimes it's called the small audit firm, but I 

 23 think, more properly, a middle size firm that isn't quite in 

 24 the big four. And Ed is representing auditors of middle-size 

 25 and smaller companies. And I look forward to his remarks. 
Page 72 

 1 MR. NUSBAUM: Thank you, Chairman. First of all, 

 2 like everyone has said before me, I am honored to be on this 

 3 Committee and thank Chairman Cox for inviting me to join the 

 4 Committee. I am particularly pleased and actually a little 

 5 surprised with the consistency of the comments so far. We 

 6 all seem to be sharing a lot of the same thoughts on what we 

 7 need to do to improve our financial reporting model to 

 8 eliminate complexity and to advance the process forward with 

 9 simple focused ideas that can be accomplished. 

 10 I particularly think that Chief Accountant Hewitt 

 11 addressed and laid out very clearly the issues of terms of 

 12 complexity, in terms of the increasing number of 

 13 restatements, and extending the role of this Committee to the 

 14 usefulness of financial information and the need to improve 

 15 the usefulness. And, particularly, his comments about 

 16 looking at this with an open mind and a blank sheet of paper, 

 17 which I think is exactly what we need to do. I believe that 

 18 the paper you circulated, Chairman Pozen, does accurately 

 19 state the issues. It provides a framework for where we need 

 20 to go forward, and I think it provides a basis for us to 

 21 commence our work. 

 22 Unfortunately, business has become infinitely 

 23 faster, more complex, and more global than it has ever been 

 24 before in our history, and we need to address that with our 

 25 financial reporting model. The economic, legal, regulatory, 
Page 73 

 1 social, and technological changes have combined to threaten 

 2 the relevance and reliability of the current model for 

 3 reporting business and financial information. As an auditor, 

 4 I see our work as a cornerstone for insuring the integrity of 

 5 our capital markets. 

 6 We need the consistent flow of accurate and timely 

 7 information to investors in order for them to make decisions; 

 8 and, it's a three-pronged role. And that is, first, of 

 9 course, the management to the preparers to share the 

 10 responsibility, and as others have said, to prepare 

 11 thoughtful and useful information. The auditors to assess 

 12 the reliability of that information in a timely way and in a 

 13 way that satisfies the needs of the users. And, finally, 

 14 it's also the responsibility of the investors to help us 

 15 formulate what information will be useful, whether it's 

 16 performance indicators or information in press releases. 

 17 One observation is that coming from a firm, be it 

 18 small in the eyes of the beholder, I guess; a firm that 

 19 focuses on small and mid-size public companies in many ways. 

 20 The world has changed in another way, and that is that the 

 21 purvey of global operations used to be in the very largest of 

 22 companies, but today, most small and mid-size public 

 23 companies have international operations and have become 

 24 global in their nature. Indeed, most private companies had 

 25 become global in their operations. So we need to take a 
Page 74 

 1 global view in applying standards in everything that we do. 

 2 The convergence process for accounting and for 

 3 auditing and other standards is a step in the right 

 4 direction, but we need to accelerate that pace. In 2002 our 

 5 firm Grant Thornton called for a global, principles-based 

 6 approach to all standard-setting areas: accounting, auditing, 

 7 and ethics standards. That need is even greater today. 

 8 Those standards need to be clear, concise and appropriate, 

 9 whether they're principles-based or have some rules within 

 10 them. And I think we have to clarify that process. 

 11 The process for setting standards can be and should 

 12 be improved, but I think one of the factors that has been 

 13 mentioned by almost all of the people on this panel is the 

 14 fact that hindsight is 20-20, and we have entered into an 

 15 area where second-guessing has impacted our ability to 

 16 produce accurate and timely financial information. Excessive 

 17 exposure to legal liability and second-guessing, I believe, 

 18 limits management's desire and the auditor's desire to 

 19 provide transparent and useful information on a timely basis. 

 20 The number of restatements, and particularly the 

 21 number of restatements with the smaller and mid-size 

 22 companies, the non-accelerated filers, which have been 

 23 increasing at a much more rapid pace than it has been for 

 24 accelerated filers, is an indication of the problem 

 25 associated with the complexity and the other issues impacting 
Page 75 

 1 second-guessing. 

 2 Going forward, I think the key was mentioned 

 3 earlier, is how do we provide useful information on a broader 

 4 basis to the users of financial information, information that 

 5 they need for decision making. Financial statements and the 

 6 audit reports do not currently provide the information 

 7 necessary to make decisions, and we need to take a positive 

 8 step through performance indicators and other information, 

 9 useful financial information, using technology and items like 

 10 XBRL to enhance the business reporting process. 

 11 I have been in this business almost 30 years and I 

 12 am proud of the accomplishments at Grant Thornton and the 

 13 advances the profession has made. But I think as Greg 

 14 pointed out, now is the perfect time to look at all of those 

 15 incremental advances that we have taken as a profession and 

 16 reassess them so that we can come up with a better business 

 17 reporting model applied on a global basis. 

 18 Thank you. 

 19 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, very much, Ed. 

 20 And now, in alphabetical order, we come to Jim 

 21 Quigley, the other representative of definitely a large audit 

 22 firm, Deloitte Touche. And Mr. Quigley has been an auditor 

 23 of many large and multi-national companies, and he is a 

 24 distinguished representative of the large auditors and as I 

 25 said presently at Deloitte. 
Page 76 

 1 Thank you. 

 2 MR. QUIGLEY: Well, thank you, Bob. 

 3 I am delighted also to be a part of these 

 4 discussions, and I am delighted to represent the auditors of 

 5 the large multi-national companies in this process. As has 

 6 been stated repeatedly, I believe investor confidence is 

 7 essential for the effective capital markets. And I think 

 8 those rely on and require relevant, reliable financial 

 9 reporting and as has been said repeatedly, our current 

 10 financial reporting system is not as effective as it could 

 11 be, for sure. And I would even suggest that at times this 

 12 system is in gridlock. 

 13 I am hopeful. I would like to be optimistic, but I 

 14 am at least hopeful that our discussions will lead to 

 15 recommendations that will improve the effectiveness of this 

 16 system. And, I also believe that we need to consider the 

 17 work of prior groups that had similar charters and try to 

 18 understand why were those recommendations not implemented. 

 19 And if we understand those obstacles, I think we can increase 

 20 the likelihood that we can develop recommendations that will 

 21 in fact find their way into implementation. 

 22 It is a unique opportunity for the accounting 

 23 profession to be part of a broad-based group to study and 

 24 contribute to what I hope will be meaningful solutions and 

 25 some recommendations again that we can implement. I think we 
Page 77 

 1 need to examine the root causes that have led to this complex 

 2 model that we have today, and I believe we need to look at 

 3 the system if we truly want to be able to make improvements. 

 4 The checks and balances that are referenced in the discussion 

 5 paper are clearly in place. And I think if we don't look at 

 6 the system, we're not going to be able to clear the gridlock 

 7 out of the intersection. 

 8 It isn't simply about, let's have standard setters 

 9 do 'X'. Let's have preparers take this action. Let's have 

 10 auditors do this, or let's have regulators take some other 

 11 action, because if in our effort at focused recommendations 

 12 we look narrowly at only one participant in this system, I 

 13 think there will be so much resistance to change that these 

 14 recommendations won't find their way into implementation. 

 15 I also would like to see us through this process. 

 16 Understand the sources and the nature of the escalating 

 17 restatements that have been referenced. I think both the 

 18 number and the type of restatements are a very important 

 19 symptom of the gridlock that I refer to, and I think the 

 20 restatements themselves are in fact a flashpoint that has 

 21 contributed to the formation of this group. Is today's 

 22 concept of materiality operational? 

 23 I looked at a recent study of restatements and less 

 24 than 25% of them constituted a material restatement that is a 

 25 material remeasurement of income by traditional measures. 
Page 78 

 1 And can we create an environment where reasonable judgments 

 2 are both encouraged and then not second-guessed? I know the 

 3 fear of second guessing influences the thinking and the 

 4 actions of very talented professionals who have made this 

 5 their life's work. And to come to a conclusion you do have 

 6 to rely on subject-matter experts and the consultation 

 7 process that has been referenced, it simply slows the 

 8 process. 

 9 But yet I believe the complexity of the model we 

 10 have today actually compels that, as well as the penalties 

 11 that are inherent in that process. It's easy to advocate the 

 12 principles-based system. I acknowledge the limitations that 

 13 were earlier referred to with respect to limiting ourselves 

 14 to such religious debates, if that's the right way to 

 15 describe those. And it's easy to also become a strong 

 16 advocate of encouraging professionals to exercise their 

 17 judgment. 

 18 But I believe as long as we have a rules-based 

 19 approach to regulation, a rules-based approach to 

 20 enforcement, a rules-based approach to litigation, a 

 21 principles-based system, and one that is underpinned by 

 22 professional judgment, will remain only an aspiration. Thus, 

 23 the reason that I think we have to look at this total system, 

 24 if in fact we want to impprove its effectiveness, I am 

 25 hopeful that we will be able to develop actionable 
Page 79 

 1 recommendations that will help us clear this gridlock and 

 2 improve the effectiveness of the system. And I look forward 

 3 to being part of the discussions and participating actively 

 4 to try to accomplish that objective. 

 5 Thank you, Bob. 

 6 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, very much Jim. Now we 

 7 will have remarks from David Sidwell. David is the CFO of 

 8 Morgan Stanley and before that spent time at an audit firm. 

 9 He obviously is very well-versed in securities markets 

 10 representing securities brokers and dealers. 

 11 Thank you, David. 

 12 MR. SIDWELL: Thank you. I'm glad you didn't use 

 13 the word "investment" bank, based on a prior commentary. 

 14 (Laughter.) 

 15 It's also unfortunate having lost many of the 

 16 comments which have been so good have already been said, so I 

 17 am going to keep my comments short. I really would like to 

 18 add to everyone my thanks to being invited to participate in 

 19 this. It is an honor. I also think the paper you have 

 20 prepared is well-written. I think the approach is good. I 

 21 do also agree with the comment you made at the beginning, 

 22 Bob, that we really do have to come up with a doable set of 

 23 recommendations. This could be boiling the ocean, and we 

 24 have to avoid doing that. Let's make some progress on those 

 25 things we can make a difference on. 
Page 80 

 1 A number of commentators have also mentioned by way 

 2 of process that we should get input from other groups and I 

 3 think that is hugely important. This is not a new issue and 

 4 there are many people who have ideas and thoughts that we 

 5 could find very useful. So I do think we need as a process 

 6 matter to find ways of soliciting and considering the 

 7 thoughts of others. 

 8 Two opening statements would be that I do actually 

 9 think the case of change is very well made, so hopefully we 

 10 won't have to spend much time on saying, is there a need to 

 11 do something differently. I think we have heard, and it was 

 12 very encouraging that Chairman Cox and Con made the statement 

 13 so clear about the mandate of getting this issue of 

 14 complexity. As a preparer and the other preparers at the 

 15 table may join me on this, it's little disheartening when 

 16 you produce 120-page documents, which you have enough 

 17 difficulty understanding, and if the actual investors don't 

 18 find it useful, that's not our goal. 

 19 We want to have as preparers a good dialogue with 

 20 investors, a good dialogue that really is explaining what 

 21 we're doing as a business and the trends we see. It is not 

 22 to get mired down in the complexity of a footnote that is 

 23 hard enough as a preparer to understand, and I am sure, it is 

 24 much more difficult for an investor. 

 25 I think we also would probably agree that the goal 
Page 81 

 1 is pretty simple. It should be sustainable, good financial 

 2 statements, good disclosures which facilitate the capital 

 3 markets. The issue is actually how you get there. I think 

 4 in terms of doable for me, there are a few errors in focus. 

 5 I do think that the time is right when you think about the 

 6 work FASB is doing on conceptual framework, the work that is 

 7 going on with the international standard setters to really 

 8 get at some of the fundamental concepts as building blocks. 

 9 I think we have to begin to move in a much more 

 10 global fashion. I know that may be a little inconsistent 

 11 with the doable world, but I think we are in a global world 

 12 and we have to think in terms that we get a set of standards 

 13 that are going to stand up just as well in the U.S. as they 

 14 will in China or elsewhere. 

 15 So I think there's a huge opportunity for FASB, 

 16 IASB, and all other standard-setters to really work together 

 17 on getting to this point of a reasonable set of financial 

 18 standards and disclosures that support a good understanding 

 19 of performance. 

 20 A sort of second practical one from my perspective 

 21 is as we think about standards everyone is focused on that 

 22 there are a number of standards that are very complex, a huge 

 23 amount of interpretation; 133, 140, ones that affect my 

 24 space, particularly. But I think in other industries you'd 

 25 think about other standards, and we should really look at 
Page 82 

 1 ways of simplifying those standards. I think a very doable 

 2 action would be to say what are the standards where the rules 

 3 are the most complex. And we have, I think, some 

 4 opportunities there to make a difference. Again, using the 

 5 convergence project may be a good way at getting after that. 

 6 I think the third point, and I think that we've 

 7 heard like we have to get at the underlying system, but it 

 8 isn't just the standards. It is then going to be the whole 

 9 process about when is a judgment that somebody makes around 

 10 the application of a standard and when isn't it, and who has 

 11 the ability to proliferate, and I use that word judiciously 

 12 because I think we do proliferate who passes a judgment on 

 13 how should it be interpreted. Is it an SEC speech? Is it a 

 14 FASB staff member answering a phone call? Is it a letter 

 15 that's written? 

 16 How does that work? Because at the end of the day, 

 17 again, wearing my preparer hat that makes life very 

 18 difficult, and I think probably if we were to spend time on 

 19 that issue, I think it could really bear a lot of fruit. I 

 20 understand this is a complex world, that you have to deal 

 21 with that complexity. However, I am not sure that having 

 22 again a body of interpretive guidance published by so many 

 23 different places really helps that. And as a preparer, 

 24 again, trying to have people say based in Hong Kong comply 

 25 with U.S. GAAP is difficult when they have to rely on that 
Page 83 

 1 body of guidance. 

 2 The last comment I think I would like to make is 

 3 just to one that I know and am going to deal with, but 

 4 obviously, a lot of this is defensive plays around protection 

 5 on the part of many of the participants in the process around 

 6 litigation, not something that we can necessarily do 

 7 something about. But maybe if we don't see this as a 

 8 conflict between preparers, regulators, and the other 

 9 participants in the system, and more so where we have a 

 10 shared goal of doing this better, maybe we can make it a 

 11 little bit more of a joint effort. 

 12 So thank you for the opportunity to give you those 

 13 comments. 

 14 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, David. 

 15 I did want to say one thing. I don't think, since 

 16 there is the Levitt Committee on auditor liability, we won't 

 17 be addressing those proposals, but I think legal liability 

 18 will come up in a number of contexts, and I think we should 

 19 not shy away from dealing with that. But just the specific 

 20 proposals for auditor liability, we'll let that Committee run 

 21 with it. 

 22 I would like now to move to Tom Weatherford. Tom 

 23 serves on the boards of a number of technology-related 

 24 companies in the West Coast and he was at one point the CFO 

 25 of another company. And he's here to represent small and 
Page 84 

 1 mid-size companies. And we're glad to have you, Tom. 

 2 MR. WEATHERFORD: Thanks very much. 

 3 First, it is an honor to be a part of this 

 4 Committee. Second, I think that I can basically say and 

 5 summarize my thoughts very easily. I agree with everything 

 6 everyone said. 

 7 (Laughter.) 

 8 MR. WEATHERFORD: It has been consistent, but I 

 9 think that one of the things that is lost when we look at 

 10 standards is not only the complexity of the standards, but 

 11 which companies have the capability inside to actually deal 

 12 with these standards. 

 13 I mean, I receive this every quarter. This is from 

 14 one of the big four. It's a standard-setter update. It's 24 

 15 pages of pronouncements, consensus, staff positions, 

 16 executive drafts, proposals and reports from the FASB, EITF, 

 17 ACSEC, SEC, PCAOB, IASB and GASB. It's just very complex, 

 18 and that's only one quarter's worth of updates. So for small 

 19 companies, it's overwhelming. A hundred-million-dollar 

 20 company just does not have the capability of a $10 Billion 

 21 company, and yet when the standard is created, it's created 

 22 as though all companies have expertise equally within the 

 23 corporation. 

 24 I also believe, having dealt with international 

 25 accounting all my life, thirty-two years in finance, five 
Page 85 

 1 years as a audit committee chair, that the rapid 

 2 globalization of markets today dictate that we should have 

 3 one standard. The economic substance of a Chinese company is 

 4 basically the same as the economic substance of a U.S. 

 5 company. A French software company has the same issues in 

 6 terms of revenue recognition as a U.S. software company. 

 7 They may have better food, but the same challenges on revenue 

 8 recognition. 

 9 Many companies today are on multiple markets. I am 

 10 on the board of several companies that are on multiple 

 11 markets in the U.S. and other countries, and they have to 

 12 deal with one set of accounting standards for that market and 

 13 another set that can be overwhelming, not only for the 

 14 company, but the chairman of the audit committee trying to 

 15 deal with this. So one standard makes a lot of sense. And 

 16 how we evolved to that: if 100 countries can use IFRS, why 

 17 can't the U.S. use something like that? 

 18 In addition to that, I think that standards need to 

 19 be simple. When you have preparers trying to understand a 

 20 standard, auditors trying to interpret the standard, and in 

 21 today's environment you can't depend on using the auditors 

 22 like you could in the old days, it's more of a hands-on. So 

 23 you are left alone. Many times I've had financial analysts 

 24 call me up when I was a CFO, and after I retired, say, Tom, 

 25 can you explain what this means, an accounting term, so I can 
Page 86 

 1 know if this company is cooking the books or not. 

 2 So even the users today are confused. So we could 

 3 have a simple set of rules in plain English so to speak, as 

 4 we do our MD&A and 10Qs. I think it would help in many ways. 

 5 I've never used a 10Q to run a company as a CFO, so if you 

 6 look at a 10Q the way it's structured today, if CFOs don't 

 7 use it and CEOs do not use it to run a company, how can 

 8 investors use it to analyze a company and understand the 

 9 workings of a company. It's become so complex with so much 

 10 legalese in it and so much repeating of the same thing, page 

 11 after page, and the risk factors, which if you read the risk 

 12 factors you wouldn't invest in any company. So there needs 

 13 to be a simple way for analysts, for investors, whether 

 14 they're sophisticated or individual investors, to really 

 15 analyze a company. 

 16 In addition to that, whether we have principles or 

 17 rules-based, the thing that is disappearing is the ability of 

 18 judgment at the local level. Today, there is more oversight. 

 19 There is more second-guessing and a lot of it is unintended. 

 20 A lot of it is perception, but it's there today where the 

 21 auditors today you can't count on your audit partner to give 

 22 you a recommendation that will stick. In fact, there's a 

 23 risk factor floating around silicon valley. It's a joke, 

 24 that says, we can't guarantee that our results are correct, 

 25 because our guy in national is too busy to answer our 
Page 87 

 1 questions to tell us how to do this. 

 2 And I think there's some truth in that in the sense 

 3 that everything seems to go to national today. And I think 

 4 it's because of the complexity of some of the standards, but 

 5 it's also because there's the punitive side if an audit 

 6 partner, especially junior audit partners, get it wrong, even 

 7 though it's an honest mistake. So we could have a balance 

 8 there. If we could have a true oversight of these 

 9 committees, I think that would help. And this is not about 

 10 cost. This is about giving preparers and auditors the time 

 11 to really analyze what makes sense. We are taking so much 

 12 time analyzing pronouncements and standards, which really 

 13 don't effect the bottom line, that we don't really have time 

 14 to do the old balance sheet review. And I could give you 

 15 many examples of that. 

 16 So, as a member of this committee, what I would 

 17 like to do is to try to push towards a simplification, to 

 18 take every type of organization that's here represented today 

 19 and have us work together, a way of doing this a lot simpler, 

 20 because I believe that it is too complex. And, as a result, 

 21 it's made it even harder for investors and preparers and 

 22 auditors to do their job properly. 

 23 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

 24 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Peter Wallison, who's out of the 

 25 country, apologizes. He couldn't make it today. He, as many 
Page 88 

 1 of you know, was General Counsel of the Treasury and has been 

 2 involved quite extensively in XBRL and interactive data for 

 3 financial reporting. So he is an expert in that area and 

 4 will be involved with the Committee. 

 5 I do want to give the observers a chance if you 

 6 want to make a short comment. Bob, I don't know whether you 

 7 wanted to say something. 

 8 This is Bob Herz, Chairman of FASB, and also 

 9 long-time senior partner in audit firms. 

 10 MR. HERZ: Yeah, thank you. 

 11 To me this is kind of like a dream come true, 

 12 because I've been asking for an effort like this for probably 

 13 the last two years. So, again, I thank not only Bob but I 

 14 thank each of you. And hearing everything around the table, 

 15 back on a lot of my own thoughts on the whole system, you 

 16 know, if I were to go about trying to think about this and 

 17 how to go about it, I'm big on kind of thinking about things 

 18 in product development terms. 

 19 We have to start from scratch almost and create a 

 20 product that met the needs of the market, you know, what 

 21 attributes would it have and how would we go about doing 

 22 that. Then we'd kind of compare that with the current state 

 23 and think about what are the constraints on creating this 

 24 dream product. Now that may be over ambitious, but it may be 

 25 a way to also kind of frame this to whether or not the 
Page 89 

 1 recommendations you come up with actually improve the state 

 2 of the world towards the objectives that everybody seems to 

 3 be trying to meet. 

 4 So I would encourage, although this is kind of a 

 5 regulated area, to think as a little blank sheet of paper out 

 6 of the box. My way of doing that is to think about what 

 7 product or sets of products would we try to market to the 

 8 market and will they be bought. 

 9 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Okay, I think also Mark Olson, the 

 10 Chairman of PCAOB, I don't know whether you wanted to add a 

 11 few comments. 

 12 MR. OLSON: Bob, just first let me second Bob 

 13 Herz's comment. 

 14 Over a year ago, when I became Chairman of the 

 15 PCAOB, one of the first visitors I had was Bob Herz, who was 

 16 suggesting the need for this Committee and was hoping that he 

 17 could count on the support from the PCAOB. A couple of 

 18 comments; first of all, I'm glad to hear you talk about 

 19 focusing as being critical, because as you read the 

 20 discussion draft, what it leaves out is the enormity of the 

 21 challenge that you've laid out and the relevance of a limited 

 22 time frame. 

 23 I think Linda was the first one that made the 

 24 comment about the fact that it's quite a large task. And 

 25 Nusbaum had said that he can sense just from the comments 
Page 90 

 1 that he's heard so far that there has been a certain focusing 

 2 take place. And I think that that's useful, because I think 

 3 we're going to have to do that first in order to achieve the 

 4 objective. 

 5 A second perspective: most of the talk, 

 6 appropriately, is focusing on the relevance and the clarity 

 7 of financial reporting so that it's meaningful to the various 

 8 audiences based on their needs and on their sophistication, 

 9 and on their perspective. 

 10 But there's another element, too, in the U.S., and 

 11 we're very proud of the confidence in the markets that we 

 12 have. And the SEC and the PCAOB were both created by the 

 13 Congress at a time when that confidence went away. And 

 14 rather than playing the role of defense, hopefully, if we're 

 15 doing it right, we're playing the role of referee. So that, 

 16 when we get questions such as are we second-guessing, we are 

 17 instead reinterpreting that role. Is the appropriate amount 

 18 of professional skepticism being applied as opposed to the 

 19 second-guessing. 

 20 So we get it out of sort of the backyard playground 

 21 amateur approach to a much more sophisticated level of 

 22 judgment consistent with, you know, what is happening now in 

 23 the capital markets. But just going around the room 

 24 listening to the various perspectives, shareholder, issuers, 

 25 audit firms, analysts, underwriters and now regulators, the 
Page 91 

 1 symbiotic effect of having that many players involved in this 

 2 process will almost surely make it somewhat complex. And so 

 3 I really welcome the opportunity for us to try to sort 

 4 through that complexity to help achieve our respective goals. 

 5 When we were first invited to participate, it was 

 6 almost like being invited to a party that said, you are 

 7 invited to a party. What can you bring? Because of what the 

 8 SEC was asking for was not simply our involvement, but for 

 9 our staff support. And Greg Skates, who was going to be 

 10 involved in the process has become familiar with the term, 

 11 secondment, recently. But in addition to myself, I am very 

 12 pleased that Charlie Niemeier, one of our other board 

 13 members, and also Dan Goelzer, who is not here, will be very 

 14 much involved. We're very pleased to be included in the 

 15 process and look forward to our involvement from the 

 16 perspective that I just mentioned. 

 17 Thanks, Bob. 

 18 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you. 

 19 I think Arthur Leder sitting in for Charles Holm 

 20 from the Fed, did you want to say anything, Arthur? 

 21 MR. LEDER: Bob, in the interest of time, I yield 

 22 my time in order to get us to the next discussion point. 

 23 So, I don't have anything to say other than Charlie 

 24 regrets not being here. He had another commitment and we 

 25 greatly support the efforts of the SEC and the Committee to 
Page 92 

 1 improve financial reporting. 

 2 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you. 

 3 Kristen Jaconi from the U.S. Treasury Department. 

 4 MS. JACONI: Well, we want to thank the SEC for 

 5 including us in this Committee, and in the discussion paper, 

 6 two Treasury initiatives were mentioned. One of them is a 

 7 restatement study, and of course Con Hewitt had mentioned the 

 8 alarmingly high number of restatements in the past decade. 

 9 We of course will share the results of that study, 

 10 probably first quarter of 2008, and then we are also forming 

 11 an advisory committee to study the sustainability of the 

 12 auditing profession. That will probably begin in the Fall, 

 13 and perhaps recommendations released by early Summer. And 

 14 again we'll share those recommendations with you. 

 15 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you. I think John White 

 16 who's the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance 

 17 here at the SEC and a very distinguished securities lawyer 

 18 might want to say a few words. 

 19 MR. WHITE: I am very pleased that all of you are 

 20 here undertaking this job. I guess I just wanted to comment 

 21 real briefly on the two roles that we play here from the 

 22 perspective of Corporation Finance. We are the group here at 

 23 the SEC that actually reviews the financial statements that 

 24 we are talking about here. But not just the financial 

 25 statements, but all of the other financial and non-financial 
Page 93 

 1 disclosures about 4,000 companies a year. And so we are 

 2 really looking forward to your help and suggestions on that 

 3 front. 

 4 The other role we have is that we are the group 

 5 that proposes a large number of the new rules to the 

 6 Commission, and so I guess I am really looking to Joe 

 7 Grundfest and some of his comments. 

 8 We would really appreciate your giving us some 

 9 things that are practical and useful and that we can 

 10 realistically propose to the Commission in the time frames we 

 11 are talking about, and so on, because we are the guys that 

 12 actually are going to implement this in many cases. And, so, 

 13 please give us something that we can do in a realistic and 

 14 practical way. 

 15 Thank you. 

 16 CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS 

 17 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you. 

 18 Let me make an attempt here in the modest amount of 

 19 time we have left to sort of summarize and get a little 

 20 discussion on some of the points that have been made here. 

 21 First, starting with a process issue Joe mentioned to open 

 22 the tent, and I think the ideas I see coming out of this and 

 23 just sort of want to run them by the Committee and get some 

 24 other thoughts on this is the paper that you have in this 

 25 little booklet, I think we were intending with the 
Page 94 

 1 Committee's agreement to put it out for comment in the sense 

 2 of trying to solicit input as to the scope of the Committee's 

 3 work. So that was one idea. 

 4 A second idea which Joe is talking about is having 

 5 more of a blog, more of communication, and I think that's a 

 6 good idea. My main thought about that is that maybe as the 

 7 work of the Committee progresses and we have some more 

 8 focused questions that we could do that, I am a little 

 9 concerned about opening it up too early, because we might get 

 10 a lot of stuff all over the place. But I do think the idea 

 11 of using the web site proactively or through blogs and maybe 

 12 one of the things that I think we can ask the working groups 

 13 as they go along is for the next public meeting is to try to 

 14 formulate some sort of request for comment through these 

 15 blogs that's focused, so we can get that benefit. 

 16 A third thing is that the idea here would be to 

 17 have most of the public meetings open meetings in Washington. 

 18 But I do think we would like to have a meeting in New York 

 19 and a meeting in the Midwest and a meeting on the West coast. 

 20 And so I think we would try to arrange these meetings so that 

 21 at least part of the time those meetings we could have 

 22 testimony from people who the Committee felt really had 

 23 something to offer. 

 24 And I think that we need again to make sure we 

 25 don't just have a gab fest. You know, sometimes I've been at 
Page 95 

 1 some of these testimonies where they sort of go on and on and 

 2 on, but if we can figure out, I'd encourage each of the 

 3 working groups to figure out who in particular they would 

 4 find to be a very useful person to testify on a focused 

 5 subject. 

 6 I don't think it's really helpful to have somebody 

 7 give a general view about all the financial system. That's 

 8 our job. But if somebody, for instance, was a real expert on 

 9 XBRL and could address some issues that really could be 

 10 useful for the whole Committee on understanding the 

 11 implications of that, and I think some of the other things 

 12 people have said about press releases, and there are a number 

 13 of topics that could be done. So I think people ought to 

 14 think about getting participants to testify in sort of a more 

 15 or less focused way. 

 16 The fourth thing, which I guess has come up, Joe 

 17 probably focused it in terms of what else has been done and 

 18 is being done, I guess I do think the fact that the Treadway 

 19 Commission still is remembered. I think the answer is that 

 20 the Treadway Commission wins the prize for the advisory 

 21 committee that still is referred to in a number of SEC rule- 

 22 making proceedings. 

 23 MR. LIDDELL: But it wasn't a federal advisory act 

 24 committee. 

 25 CHAIRMAN POZEN: It wasn't a federal advisory act 
Page 96 

 1 committee. Okay, we were not sure of that. Anyway, it may 

 2 or may not have come before we were all subject to the 

 3 wonderful rules of FACA. But it was in the nature of an 

 4 advisory committee and it did have a big effect. And I think 

 5 it led to COSO. I think we'll ask the staff. We'll ask Jim 

 6 and Russ to take a look at other advisory committees to see 

 7 what they recommended and why it did or did not come about 

 8 and I think, more broadly, to look at other studies that have 

 9 been done so that we should at least recreate the wheel and 

 10 have a good sense in these areas of what other studies have 

 11 been done. 

 12 And I would say as a "C" matter under that, "A" 

 13 being other advisory committees, "B" other studies. I know 

 14 that there are some ongoing efforts, that the Center of Audit 

 15 Quality has held a number of meetings in which they have 

 16 tried to solicit from investors what are you really 

 17 interested in. And financial statements I know the AICPA, I 

 18 think they have some sort of, I don't know if it's a survey 

 19 or study about what people think when they read the audit 

 20 opinion, what they think they're getting there. 

 21 So I think we should have the benefit of what's 

 22 been done. That's a chunk of this just in terms of process, 

 23 so I was going to stop there and ask anyone on the Committee 

 24 whether they had any other suggestions as to a process basis 

 25 of things that they would like to see us do. 
Page 97 

 1 Well, I think what I've mapped out is actually 

 2 quite a big program in terms of just getting the background. 

 3 But I think what we'll do is try to think of some public 

 4 meetings in some of them in the future as being partly 

 5 meetings of our own to discuss this, and partly ways to get 

 6 participants in front of the Committee. 

 7 A second thing just somebody raised, and I think it 

 8 may have been Jeff but I'm not totally sure, about 

 9 priorities. I think we were trying to say that we have two 

 10 main groups, the investors and preparers, who are affected by 

 11 financial reporting. I think, and people should express 

 12 their view that I think that we would probably agree as a 

 13 Committee that between those the priority should be on 

 14 investors. I think this is what Chris may have said, rather 

 15 than preparers. 

 16 On the other hand, I think we ought to recognize 

 17 that the preparer community has to bear the brunt of some of 

 18 this. And so if we asked all of Jeff's analysts what they 

 19 wanted, they would come up with a very long list, since I 

 20 know we're on portfolio management and analysts. And so we 

 21 need to be constrained in a practical way of what is 

 22 reasonable for the preparers to publish. 

 23 And third of all, I think we ought to recognize 

 24 that there are sort of various groups which we think of as 

 25 intermediaries, auditors on the preparer's side and analysts 
Page 98 

 1 and people like Motley Fool on the investors side for these 

 2 have to be run through. So I don't know whether that seems 

 3 reasonable from the point of view of the Committee in terms 

 4 of just people want to reach some sort of preliminary 

 5 viewpoint on that. 

 6 I don't know whether Jeff or Chris want to comment 

 7 on that? 

 8 MR. LIDDELL: Yeah, I'm happy to just endorse what 

 9 you said and repeat what I said. From my point of view, 

 10 investors are the primary group who we are trying to optimize 

 11 for here. So in the case of conflict we should be optimizing 

 12 around them, but with the practical overlay that it has to be 

 13 done on a cost-benefit basis. Certainly, when I talk to 

 14 investors, they initially start with a wish list that's as 

 15 long as your arm. But when you actually come down to the 

 16 practical suggestions that they have about what they really 

 17 want to see, it's a much more finite list. 

 18 And when they do accept the fact that there are 

 19 costs involved in getting a longer wish list and they really 

 20 don't want to have to bear those costs to get the incremental 

 21 amount of information. So I think investors is the right 

 22 paradigm to take here, but applied in a very practical sense. 

 23 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Jeff? 

 24 MR. DIERMEIER: Yeah, I guess I would only add that 

 25 that makes perfect sense. The financial reports are for the 
Page 99 

 1 investors. The assumption is that inside the company there 

 2 is all the information that you possibly could have by 

 3 definition at the disposal of management. So from that 

 4 standpoint, management is not in the dark in terms of what 

 5 information might be available. 

 6 So from that standpoint, I think it gets a slight 

 7 priority edge to the end users in terms of financial 

 8 reporting so to speak. But your comment about, you know, 

 9 obviously there has to be a check balance there in terms of 

 10 what the preparers can actually come up with in a 

 11 cost-effective basis is pretty critical. 

 12 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Yes, Denny? 

 13 MR. BERESFORD: There's one constituency that isn't 

 14 represented here that has a great interest, and that's the 

 15 academic constituency. I guess Joe and I-- 

 16 MR. POZEN: Some lawyer is going to have to tell us 

 17 whether a legitimate constituency for the purposes of this, 

 18 we were told, you know, in this theology that we're not sure 

 19 whether they represent it. But, we'll be glad to have you 

 20 double in that role. 

 21 MR. BERESFORD: I apologize to the act or whatever 

 22 it should be, but my point is that I certainly agree with the 

 23 idea of the privacy of the interest of the investors. And of 

 24 course, Chris made the point of cost benefit. I think we 

 25 also have to take into consideration the doability of some of 
Page 100 

 1 the things that we're talking about here. I'm thinking in 

 2 terms of educating students. I think that maybe we haven't 

 3 kept up to date with some of the things that we should be 

 4 doing, but to be very honest, the complexity of the 

 5 accounting model is beyond even the masters of accounting, 

 6 specialist-type students, these days. 

 7 I met yesterday at FNMA with a couple of people who 

 8 spent full time, they're very senior people in the 

 9 organization in the accounting area, they spend full time on 

 10 securitization transactions. They have 20 people in the 

 11 accounting policy area to try to make sure that they cross 

 12 all the t's and dot all the i's and so forth. So I think 

 13 that we just have to take into consideration the practicality 

 14 of many of these issues. It might be nice to do some 

 15 additional things, but sometimes they're beyond our human 

 16 abilities. 

 17 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I think your point is very well 

 18 taken and I don't know whether anyone else wanted to comment 

 19 in this area. 

 20 MR. COOK: A comment just supporting Denny's view 

 21 and also encouraging maybe in responding to John's comment 

 22 about give us things that are practical and actionable and so 

 23 on. I don't know what is actionable and practical, but there 

 24 has to be some understanding on our part what kind of 

 25 flexibility might be there. I harken back to the mid-1980s. 
Page 101 

 1 There was a lot of time spent by the firm and by the SEC and 

 2 by FEI on the concept of summary reporting, and substituting 

 3 a summary report, a condensed version in plain English for 

 4 the extensive compliance type disclosures, and it never 

 5 really took off. 

 6 An interesting anecdote was offered by the CEO of 

 7 one company in opposition or in contrast with the product of 

 8 the company that made cookies. And they offered a box of 

 9 cookies or the annual report. Take your pick. And 93% of 

 10 the people voted for the cookies, because they said, we'll 

 11 eat the cookies, and we don't get any value out of the annual 

 12 report. 

 13 So we were trying at that time, just to make this 

 14 point, trying to find a way to substitute a communication 

 15 that would be useful for a communication that was not 

 16 receiving any marketplace acceptance. And it never went 

 17 anywhere, because we couldn't get beyond the point of 

 18 everything else would have to be provided the way it had 

 19 always been provided, and this would just be an add on. And 

 20 companies said, gee, it's a good idea, but I don't want to 

 21 pay for an add on. And so it died in the mid-'80s, late-80s, 

 22 despite being a concept that seemed to have a lot of value. 

 23 What can we learn about the ability to implement 

 24 ideas about streamlining communication processes and so on, 

 25 so we don't just make a recommendation. Somebody says, 
Page 102 

 1 that's nice, but sorry. We can't do that because we've got 

 2 17 reasons why that won't work. 

 3 What's out there John? 

 4 MR. WHITE: Well, one thing you might want to look 

 5 at, I know we have not been saying nice things about past 

 6 FACAs. But the Small Public Company Advisory Committee, 

 7 which presented their report in April of last year, we did 

 8 put forth, and I think they had like 25 recommendations 

 9 separate from their 404 recommendations. But this May, which 

 10 would be I guess 13 months later, we have just recommended to 

 11 the Commission, and they have put out I think about seven or 

 12 eight hundred pages of proposals off of their 

 13 recommendations. 

 14 And what you'll see is we just kind of picked 

 15 pieces of their recommendations that we thought were 

 16 realistic that could be done in an effective and a practical 

 17 way. I mean, that's at least an example of where we had a 

 18 recent committee who's given us a lot of recommendations, and 

 19 at least as a first wave we tried to pick what we think we 

 20 can do out of it. 

 21 But those haven't been adopted yet. I mean, 

 22 obviously, those proposals have just come out. 

 23 CHAIRMAN POZEN: And have flexibility to look at 

 24 them. 

 25 MR. WHITE: Yeah, I mean, that's just an example of 
Page 103 

 1 seeing where you really have a good one. 

 2 CHAIRMAN POZEN: That's good, very good. Bob? 

 3 MR. HERZ: I echo Mike's comments, because in my 

 4 former incarnation, probably 7 or 8 years ago, I actually 

 5 chaired a group to look at integrating and streamlining the 

 6 whole financial reporting package, and SEC GAAP redundancies, 

 7 and that. And we started to take a kind of a nascent look at 

 8 technology and the possible things like click-downs and 

 9 tiering of information. 

 10 And one of the barriers at that point was that the 

 11 difference between the legal regulations around what was in 

 12 financial statements, audited versus MD&A versus other, 

 13 started to create at that time was called "in the envelope, 

 14 out of the envelope" kinds of issues. And we were told 

 15 that's going to be difficult to modify. So if we're going to 

 16 really look at this tiering of information issue and summary 

 17 information, all of those kinds of things that are now 

 18 cloaked in the regalia of different forms of legal protection 

 19 and liability, I think there needs to be flexibility in that, 

 20 I think, just thinking down the line, if we're going to think 

 21 about those kinds of potential solutions. 

 22 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, that's a good segue. I was 

 23 going to try to summarize in each of these four areas sort of 

 24 some of what I had heard, and just if I didn't hear it 

 25 correctly, people should feel free to come in. And so 
Page 104 

 1 picking up on this whole area of information delivery, I 

 2 think I heard some very important points about wanting to 

 3 allow summaries, and I think the point that Bob Herz just 

 4 made is the critical point. Whether it's the summary or it's 

 5 a selective array of information that's, you know, sort of a 

 6 business indicator for a particular industry, one of the key 

 7 questions is going to have to be the liability issues; that a 

 8 lot of the willingness of issuers and registrants to do this, 

 9 by its very nature, the investor is getting a partial. 

 10 And there has to be some notion that if the 

 11 investor, whether it's through hyperlink or getting a full 

 12 prospectus or full annual report, that they will be deemed to 

 13 have gotten the full document. Because otherwise people can 

 14 be very afraid to have these essentially subsets of 

 15 information. And I think that's the key question that that 

 16 group is going to have to look at. Another key question 

 17 which I think a number of people have read is that XBRL has a 

 18 lot of potential. The difference between potential and 

 19 realization is huge, and I think that as Susan points out 

 20 that in the banking area, it's been very successful. It's an 

 21 easier environment to work in, but I think there is something 

 22 really to be learned from that. 

 23 Some of the things that people want from XBRL are 

 24 more standardized to the extent for instance you could have 

 25 industry performance indicators that were agreed upon by an 
Page 105 

 1 industry, but to some degree, you have real customization 

 2 where the analyst community wants a degree of customization 

 3 that, you know, would provide some real challenges in terms 

 4 of how that's done. 

 5 I think I heard two other things in this whole 

 6 area. One is the importance of the MD&A and sort of trying 

 7 to, if anything, expand that and give people more comfort, 

 8 give the writers more comfort that they can be expansive and 

 9 they are sort of free-writing. And I am sort of interested, 

 10 John, about your experiments at free-writing in the 33 Act 

 11 area where you've been allowing people to deviate a little 

 12 from the standard sort of language in these prospectuses. 

 13 So I think that that's an area -- both MD&A and the 

 14 free-writing, which is something that's now allowed in the 33 

 15 Act process where before it was highly 

 16 stylized -- free-writing might be viewed as allowing in 

 17 writing what people used to say on road shows. But maybe 

 18 that's too cynical a view. 

 19 And I think a fourth thing which quite a few people 

 20 have mentioned is we have a lot to learn from the press 

 21 release. We have a lot to learn from the earnings release. 

 22 We need to make that a central part of our inquiry, because 

 23 the press release represents sort of what the companies and 

 24 the analysts are jointly thinking of. This is what's really 

 25 important; and, you know, you're stripping out, whether it be 
Page 106 

 1 stripping out one-time events or stripping out currency 

 2 fluctuations into some sort of concept of core earnings, 

 3 however it's defined, and then these other things. 

 4 So those were four things that I heard in the 

 5 information delivery area, though I believe that the press 

 6 release, also, I think, has implications for the substantive 

 7 complexity group. 

 8 But I am going to just stop there, and take 

 9 people's comments on that. 

 10 Yes, Greg? 

 11 MR. JONAS: Bob, just first I'd like to echo I 

 12 think that's an excellent summary of the display here at the 

 13 delivery part of the program. 

 14 Your comments about MD&A are particularly relevant 

 15 to me as I think of the many, as I mentioned before, meetings 

 16 that companies come to give us updates on their business and 

 17 the huge contrast between a face-to-face discussion with 

 18 management versus what we read in MD&A. And typically in the 

 19 face-to-face meeting, management delivers a book that are 

 20 pictures, graphs and charts. And what management does is 

 21 then put their color around those graphs and charts, and it's 

 22 wonderfully clear. It's really insightful. A lot of the 

 23 things in the graphs and charts don't have dollar signs in 

 24 front of them, a lot of non-financial data. But it's just 

 25 the marked contrast between the clarity of the face-to-face 
Page 107 

 1 meetings with the pictures versus what we see in MD&A, and 

 2 hopefully we can get some of that clarity into that reporting 

 3 process. 

 4 CHAIRMAN POZEN: That's very good. 

 5 Anyone else want to add something? 

 6 MR. DIERMEIER: Bob, if I could add something, 

 7 because I think maybe your first point on all summaries, 

 8 maybe you were trying to get to the smaller, the less 

 9 sophisticated, the serious investment amateur so to speak. 

 10 But it seems like there seems to be some focus on that 

 11 element as opposed to just the professional investor. 

 12 And as I try to think about this, the only way I 

 13 can see getting at that is literally, I think, there may be 

 14 questions about segmenting these individual investors in 

 15 terms of what they try to get out of the financial 

 16 statements, what they're doing. Many individual small 

 17 investors are not trying to pick a stock the same way we 

 18 might do it in the institutional world. Their portfolio 

 19 might be dominated by single stocks they wouldn't allot, or 

 20 it might be that they're just trying to get exposure to an 

 21 area of the marketplace. 

 22 So, I think it might be helpful for these 

 23 individual investors in these reportings to actually think 

 24 about the segments themselves that they come from, because 

 25 that might inform our discussion. 
Page 108 

 1 MR. GRUNDFEST: Greg, with regard to your 

 2 observation about how the information you get in these 

 3 face-to-face meetings is typically infinitely more valuable 

 4 than reading a 'K' or a 'Q' or a press release is exactly 

 5 right, and we have to understand two reasons why that's the 

 6 case. 

 7 Number one, a lot of the information you get, 

 8 companies wouldn't want to have disclosed to their 

 9 competitors. All right, so we have to understand that in 

 10 every situation when we're talking about disclosure here, one 

 11 of the other balances is anything you put in your 'Q' your 

 12 competitors are going to read. All right, you know, people 

 13 go through the exhibits to S-1s in Silicon Valley, you know, 

 14 a little bit like they're the hottest, steaming novel that 

 15 you'll ever see. 

 16 Because the information that's required to be 

 17 disclosed has real competitive value, and a lot of companies 

 18 don't like going through the S-1 process, because they say, 

 19 look at everything we have to disclose to all of our 

 20 competitors. It's going to be a road map for how we're doing 

 21 our business, then you compete with us. So, you know, 

 22 understand there's a little bit of yin and yang in this. 

 23 And then second you've got the litigation 

 24 environment. It is relatively easy to sit with you and talk 

 25 about metrics that don't have dollar signs associated, 
Page 109 

 1 because you understand how those translate to dollar signs. 

 2 If I am going to do the same slide show and try to 

 3 explain all of the stuff in a way that I can feel comfortable 

 4 that I'm not later going to be sued in hindsight with regard 

 5 to the information I'm describing, I'm not going to present 

 6 the same information the same way. So that would suggest we 

 7 need to think potentially about broader safe harbors for 

 8 certain types of disclosures if we hope to call them forth. 

 9 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, I think that's a well-taken 

 10 statement and it leads us into the third area, the compliance 

 11 audit area, where I think legal liability is there. And it's 

 12 there both in terms of class actions and it's there in terms 

 13 of SEC enforcement. 

 14 And I think that while we're not going to be 

 15 proposing something for auditors, I think we need to think 

 16 through that. I also heard a number of people refer to 

 17 restatements, and we will take advantage of the Treasury 

 18 study of restatements and understand that. 

 19 A third thing I heard is Linda is making good 

 20 example of revenue recognition, which may be a good case 

 21 study in terms of trying to understand how people get 

 22 themselves into trouble and why and whether there's anything 

 23 we can do about that. 

 24 The fourth thing, which I think in many ways the 

 25 most important but the most difficult is there are quite a 
Page 110 

 1 few people who use the phrase second guessing, and I think 

 2 everyone is concerned about second guessing and I think it 

 3 relates partly to what I call the judgment element of 

 4 principles versus rules, because I guess Mark if I were to 

 5 say that the one thing that comes out of AS-5 now is that the 

 6 auditors should use more judgment, but if the auditors use 

 7 more judgment and then somebody comes in and second-guesses 

 8 them, then they are going to feel like they're just being set 

 9 up. 

 10 And I think one of the tasks of this Committee in 

 11 that particular work group and a very challenging task is to 

 12 try to understand how it is that we build a system that 

 13 encourages judgment from auditors. But obviously, PCAOB 

 14 can't be in the position of just saying, okay, you exercise 

 15 judgment, you're automatically right. On the other hand, 

 16 there's got to be a degree of discretion there. There's got 

 17 to be some ability to make choices, and I think that's one of 

 18 the things where, you know, that we'll really have to grapple 

 19 with. 

 20 We look forward to a full and free discussion on 

 21 that point. I guess all we can say is the exercise of 

 22 judgment of auditors is now elevated to a new level. 

 23 Everyone's in favor of that until someone gets zinged in an 

 24 inspection. I don't know whether a lender or anyone else 

 25 wanted to say anything else about this third area of 
Page 111 

 1 compliance and audit. 

 2 MS. GRIGGS: Well, I guess someone else mentioned 

 3 materiality as being one of the issues that may be necessary 

 4 to grapple with in dealing with restatements. I know a lot 

 5 of our clients have restated for reasons that may not be 

 6 material to a sophisticated investor, but that's a hard 

 7 judgment to make. And so, is there a way to try to come to 

 8 grips with making those judgments, which cash flow 

 9 statements, which is my particular bugaboo, don't need to be 

 10 restated, even though somebody classified amounts incorrect. 

 11 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, I think that's an excellent 

 12 point and Greg may be able to help us, because I think 

 13 Moody's and a lot of other people look at a lot of these 

 14 restatements and maybe put out a report sometimes; make a 

 15 judgment. 

 16 Because there are so many technical restatements (I 

 17 don't know what the right term is) and try to understand what 

 18 restatements are really making major financial changes versus 

 19 ones that seem to be of a more technical nature. 

 20 MR. JONAS: You know, Bob, I think in a nutshell 

 21 it's entirely possible that amounts could be very large and 

 22 error could be very large and the market wouldn't care. That 

 23 happens, for example, when the amount happens to not hit 

 24 metrics the market believes are the drivers of value. 

 25 CHAIRMAN POZEN: And I think a number of us have 
Page 112 

 1 been in situations where we've had to restate where the 

 2 ultimate bottom line wasn't actually changed, as you say, but 

 3 some aspect of how you got there changed, and timing and 

 4 these sorts of things. 

 5 So I guess one way to look at this is we might want 

 6 to understand which situations the market reacts to as they 

 7 are telling you something about the significance. And the 

 8 other thing that I think is involved with that is trying to 

 9 figure out other ways to deal intelligently with the 

 10 mistakes. I mean, because it's not that we're trying to make 

 11 believe that there weren't mistakes or perhaps maybe in 

 12 certain things, it's not so much mistakes, but sort of new 

 13 understandings of certain accounting principles, whether it 

 14 is a way to deal with that prospectively rather than have 

 15 this enormous number of retroactive. At least in my mind, I 

 16 think, one of the measures of success of this Committee is if 

 17 five years later the number of restatements has been reduced 

 18 because we've given people better guidance and we've also 

 19 defined what are the really important things that change 

 20 versus not. 

 21 Just to try to summarize going backwards, is the 

 22 areas of rule making and standard process. I think we heard 

 23 a number of people basically saying in one form or another 

 24 there's too much GAAP parading around. Obviously, what FASB 

 25 does in a very succinct and quick manner is GAAP. 
Page 113 

 1 But as somebody said, if you ask your audit firm 

 2 what's GAAP, you get this long essay and it includes 

 3 something that somebody gleaned from an SEC comment letter 

 4 and because they dealt with it in an enforcement proceeding, 

 5 something happened, and then maybe even something that 

 6 accounting fellow said in a speech or something that came up 

 7 through EITF, so I think that we need to have a much more 

 8 disciplined process, and I know Bob Herz agrees with this. 

 9 We surely don't want to stop lots of people from 

 10 interpreting, commenting, kibitzing, whatever way you want to 

 11 say it, but we need a better sense of what actually is GAAP. 

 12 And then it's almost like everything else should have a stamp 

 13 on it. This is not GAAP, this is our views. You know this, 

 14 so you can have auditing firms or organizations that put out 

 15 guides or their views. 

 16 I think we have to be a lot clearer distinguishing 

 17 what's GAAP from what's not GAAP, and people have done these 

 18 things. And I think the other thing you hear is because FASB 

 19 takes so long and comes out with these standards that are 

 20 quite complex, that the reason this is happening is because 

 21 people are seeking guidance, that they can't find it in these 

 22 long statements, and they also want it in a more timely 

 23 manner. 

 24 And I think that both Con and John are providing on 

 25 a registrant basis some ability to deal with that. Now, 
Page 114 

 1 people may fear that and that's something we ought to 

 2 explore, but I think there are ways through your processes to 

 3 get reactions on a registrant basis about whether this 

 4 particular way of accounting makes sense. I think the bigger 

 5 problem that we need to grapple with is the sort of what I 

 6 call intermediate level issues, which aren't registrant 

 7 specific. But they are not global, but they are sort of 

 8 areas as people think through these statements where maybe 

 9 you get a whole new type of derivative that comes up or you 

 10 get a whole area that people just haven't thought about being 

 11 within FAS 140, and now people are thinking of it as FAS 140. 

 12 So those are areas, and I don't know whether its 

 13 through the EITF or through rule-making proceedings or other 

 14 things, so it seems like that's an area where the Committee 

 15 could on the one hand get a much more disciplined and narrow 

 16 definition of GAAP. And, on the other hand, get a sort of 

 17 more enunciated and articulated way for people to get 

 18 guidance faster at different levels. So that's what I heard 

 19 in a variety of different forms. I would be glad to take 

 20 anyone's comments on that. 

 21 Susan? 

 22 MS. BIES: I want to second the comments that 

 23 you're making. And I think one of the projects that I know 

 24 Bob's group is working on is this codification, and I think 

 25 that's essential. I mean, there needs to be. It's getting 
Page 115 

 1 so complex and so many projects and there have in the past 

 2 been too many accounting rule setters. We need to find a way 

 3 that someone who is trying to figure out what is the way to 

 4 look at the accounting treatment for a transaction to go to 

 5 it. 

 6 Right now, you have to go through it by standard, 

 7 and I think it's importance in the staff speeches for the SEC 

 8 and all the things people have said. I think also as you 

 9 just mentioned is a lot of this comes into confusion because 

 10 of the innovation. There's new kinds of products, there's 

 11 new service streams of building business revenue. They also 

 12 create gray areas and what old accounting can apply to new 

 13 innovations. And until that gets settled through a rule- 

 14 making process, someone has to account for it. 

 15 So I think there needs to be a way and maybe 

 16 through something that is out of the codification project or 

 17 something like that that helps people focus on what are the 

 18 relevant issues they ought to apply to a transaction that may 

 19 be innovative. 

 20 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Okay, thank you. And then, yes, 

 21 Denny? 

 22 MR. BERESFORD: Just one other small point. I am 

 23 reminded by it sitting next to Sue. 

 24 I think that one issue that hasn't been mentioned 

 25 is what I would call regulator GAAP, that particularly in the 
Page 116 

 1 loan loss provision in banks, I think we've had for a long 

 2 time a disconnect between what the bank regulators insist on 

 3 and their version of GAAP versus what the FASB thinks should 

 4 be the case. 

 5 We talked around this for a long time, but that's 

 6 one specific example. I think there are other cases that the 

 7 regulators basically say you shouldn't follow anything other 

 8 than GAAP, but it's their version of GAAP. 

 9 MR. COOK: Bob, could I ask a question on this -- I 

 10 don't know quite where this fits, but it sounded familiar as 

 11 we were talking about too many GAAPs and too many rules. The 

 12 question, and I just don't know the full scope of the 

 13 codification project, but who will consider or where will we 

 14 consider the issue of sunrise/sunset -- taking a look at 

 15 these standards -- taking a look at things that have been 

 16 there. The point Greg made -- we've been adding things on 

 17 for 40 years, but we rarely if ever take things away. So we 

 18 have segment information. We just by rote keep producing 

 19 this segment information and for many people they say it 

 20 really isn't useful. Then when they do go to their earnings 

 21 release they put out segment information -- revenue 

 22 segmentation -- that is very useful, that is never produced 

 23 in their GAAP financial statements. They are still cranking 

 24 out these capital expenditures by this and by that. 

 25 Bob, does this bring -- does this come up in the 
Page 117 

 1 codification? Do we look to see if -- 

 2 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I think it is listed within the 

 3 standard setting working group that how to deal with existing 

 4 standards, subsetting is listed within that group for working 

 5 purposes. 

 6 MR. HERZ: I think there's two issues here. The 

 7 codification is just to put all these multiple forms of GAAP 

 8 in an integrated form. It won't read like a novel but it 

 9 will all be in one place by topic so you don't have to figure 

 10 out where it was. 

 11 And the SEC guidance that they believe is mandatory 

 12 will be in a separate section by topic so it may force some 

 13 discipline on them because they will be contributing to the 

 14 codification as well. Anything that's not in the 

 15 codification will not be GAAP, and therefore will only be one 

 16 level of GAAP at that, what is in the codification. 

 17 The second issue, I think is really an issue of our 

 18 processes, our agenda as to whether or not you think whether 

 19 we go through and do things, setting agenda properly looks at 

 20 the efficacy, cost effectiveness of existing standards on a 

 21 timely basis or not. And I very much welcome that kind of 

 22 input. 

 23 MR. COOK: I was thinking, Bob, and I think that 

 24 would be helpful, but I wasn't thinking just about an 

 25 individual standard but information content which adds to 
Page 118 

 1 complexity just by volume. Segment information, what I refer 

 2 to the statement of comprehensive income, which is 

 3 incomprehensible to most people. What would make that 

 4 statement go away if nobody found it useful and yet it is 

 5 part of the complexity because people are producing it? I 

 6 was looking for -- 

 7 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I think we're not going to ask Bob 

 8 to give you the definitive answer but I do think -- 

 9 MR. COOK: No, no. I wasn't looking for that. I 

 10 was just asking where are we going to look at the question. 

 11 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I think we will look at the 

 12 question of sunsetting and grandfathering and these things in 

 13 the working group on standard setting. 

 14 John. 

 15 MR. WHITE: A couple of random comments. One, the 

 16 smaller business advisory committee recommended to us that we 

 17 eliminate all the small business forms, hundreds of pages of 

 18 forms. That's one of the recommendations that we have put 

 19 before the whole system, to just change the whole system, to 

 20 get rid of a ton of stuff. 

 21 A couple of other thoughts that came to me. In 

 22 terms of the timing of your recommendations, I mean I'm 

 23 looking at some of the things we're thinking about doing. 

 24 We're moving, for example, on XBRL and future XBRL rule 

 25 making. we're going to be doing stuff before next August is 
Page 119 

 1 my guess and so if you wait until a year from now to give us 

 2 suggestions that's going to be behind the curve that we're 

 3 operating on. So you should not lose track of making the 

 4 interim recommendations. 

 5 Again, you'll see that the other advisory committee 

 6 I'm referring to made some interim recommendations that we 

 7 accepted. And so just to put that in your toolbox, I would 

 8 think you probably should think about that. 

 9 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, we do -- I think one of the 

 10 people you may not have realized that's been seconded to be a 

 11 staffer on that group is someone from your group, so 

 12 hopefully that will help us get into the -- time frame. 

 13 MR. WHITE: Really? 

 14 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I did want to mention that. 

 15 MR. WHITE: You should have mentioned that. 

 16 I guess just a couple of other, again, random 

 17 thoughts for you to think about. I guess when I started 15 

 18 months ago there were -- we had posted 500 sets of comment 

 19 letters. We have now posted something like 10,000 sets of 

 20 comment letters. We thought we were doing a good thing from 

 21 a transparency standpoint but I kind of listened to this and 

 22 I -- maybe you should think about what it means to 

 23 have -- because we literally have put up -- most of those 

 24 comment letters have come up in a little less than a year. 

 25 CHAIRMAN POZEN: I guess we need to think about the 
Page 120 

 1 difference between soliciting comments and compiling 

 2 summaries versus just having all those raw comments out 

 3 there. That's a good point. 

 4 MR. WHITE: I mean one of the things that we have 

 5 thought about where we're doing targeted comments like on the 

 6 new executive comp rules, we're doing a specific review 

 7 project there where we're looking at hundreds of companies, 

 8 we have actually held up putting out any comment letters 

 9 until we have looked at a large number of companies, we've 

 10 gone through a first review, we've learned how we think the 

 11 comments ought to work and now we're going back and relooking 

 12 at all those letters before we put out any of them in hopes 

 13 of having some consistency in the comments when we do put 

 14 them out. 

 15 But I mean there are some possibilities. 

 16 CHAIRMAN POZEN: No, those are very useful 

 17 suggestions. 

 18 MR. WHITE: The final one, on the liability front, I 

 19 think we are open to figuring out ways to at least try to 

 20 work with you and I'll just say, phase things in. I mean in 

 21 the XBRL area where we certainly are focusing on, in the 

 22 voluntary program, that information is coming in not the 

 23 normal liability way. In the 404 area where we have for all 

 24 the smaller companies the management report coming in in the 

 25 first year and the audit report coming in in the second year, 
Page 121 

 1 those management reports are always coming in in a furnished 

 2 way instead of filed, just in a phase in way from a liability 

 3 standpoint, just to throw out some more possibilities that 

 4 I -- and we are great believers in incorporation by 

 5 reference, by the way. So I mean I think -- you give us some 

 6 recommendations like that I think we -- 

 7 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Good. That's great. 

 8 In the interest of time here, just the last area, 

 9 the substantive complexity area. I guess that' the area 

 10 where we heard a lot of genuine and I think well founded 

 11 criticism of complexity, not so clear exactly how you solve 

 12 that problem. 

 13 I think people are pointing out that on the other 

 14 hand economic transactions are more complex, and there are 

 15 differences between users and preparers. I guess my sense is 

 16 that that committee might -- there have been a number of, I 

 17 think, useful points. Maybe one way is approach this area by 

 18 looking in depth at a few examples. 

 19 I think Denny mentioned business combinations as an 

 20 area where -- unclear whether that's becoming complex 

 21 unnecessarily, the fudge being in unnecessarily. 

 22 I think Linda mentioned 159. 159 is an alternative 

 23 standard for using mark-to-market or historic in certain 

 24 circumstances and how that turned out. Did that just produce 

 25 more complexity by allowing people to have alternatives and 
Page 122 

 1 then people then fought about whether the alternatives were 

 2 being stated in accordance with the principles? 

 3 And I think obviously hedge accounting is another 

 4 area. The last thing I would say here and then another 

 5 comment is I think that Joe makes an interesting point about 

 6 whether there are areas where we're assuming or we're sort of 

 7 making believe like there's one simple point when it's really 

 8 a distribution of probabilities. 

 9 MR. GRUNDFEST: Let me go to that for a moment 

 10 because complexity is not always a bad thing because 

 11 sometimes if you're going to honestly describe a complicated 

 12 transaction you have to give a complicated answer, and its 

 13 foolish to expect that everybody is going to be able to 

 14 understand a complicated, honest answer. And by forcing 

 15 somebody to give a simple yes/no answer to a complicated 

 16 question, you can be forcing somebody to lie. I don't think 

 17 that's where we want to go. 

 18 So complexity is not necessarily the enemy. I 

 19 think what we have to look for -- look, when complexity is 

 20 used to obscure, when complexity is used to evade, well, then 

 21 you know it's a variant on fraud, and that's a very bad 

 22 thing. But sometimes we try to derive simplicity in such a 

 23 way that it really gets in the way of comprehension, all 

 24 right, and we shouldn't do that. 

 25 Very simple point, you know, the army of 20 people, 
Page 123 

 1 you know, trying to figure out how to do 

 2 securitizations -- well, you could probably fire half of 

 3 them, all right, or have them do higher valued things for 

 4 society like revenue recognition, I don't know. You could 

 5 reassign them to do other things if instead of saying, you 

 6 know, we had to put this transaction in one pigeonhole and 

 7 one pigeonhole only, if instead we could say, you know, we 

 8 can look at this transaction and fairly characterize it one 

 9 way, a, b, or, c, for the following reasons, and then let's 

 10 just explain that to the world. It has a variety of 

 11 different characteristics, all right, and let's explain that 

 12 honestly. You try to force this characterization into one 

 13 pigeonhole you're going to make us all nuts and its never 

 14 going to fit in there in a very comfortable way, and then 

 15 we've got to document the reason why we put it in and then 

 16 we've got a team of 20 people. 

 17 So this sense of false precision, this sense of 

 18 false certainty I think is an enemy to the process and 

 19 there's a level at which people in the audit profession and 

 20 the standards setting profession I think have a hard time 

 21 letting go. Maybe sometimes things are black and white all 

 22 right, and not all black and not all white, and we need ways 

 23 to describe that. 

 24 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Well, I think that's probably a 

 25 good summary of our challenges in dealing with complexity. 
Page 124 

 1 We all are against unnecessary or undue complexity, but on 

 2 the other hand it may be the case that in other areas in 

 3 order to accurately reflect the substance of what's going on 

 4 we need more sensitivity analysis or more pro rata approach, 

 5 I mean things that sort of reflect that these aren't all or 

 6 nothing. 

 7 I think -- this will prove to be a very difficult 

 8 area, but I think that this is something we might approach by 

 9 looking at specific examples and understanding them because 

 10 I'm not sure that abstract discussions in this area really 

 11 get us that far. 

 12 And I'd just say one more thing, which I think is 

 13 in 159, this more general problem of what's mark to market 

 14 and historical cost is another area where we really have to 

 15 look closely at how we can do that better. Again, a very 

 16 difficult area. 

 17 So I think that we surely have a brief that's broad 

 18 enough. And I think back to what Joe was saying, I think we 

 19 will try to make ourselves famous as an advisory committee by 

 20 coming up with a small number of proposals that are doable. 

 21 We intend to work closely with John and Con to try to make 

 22 sure that this isn't just done at the very end. But we'll 

 23 understand where your processes are and try to make this as 

 24 useful a group as possible. 

 25 So I think we've run a little over time but I 
Page 125 

 1 think -- if anyone else wanted to say anything? So then why 

 2 don't -- we're going to close at this point. Jim, I don't 

 3 know whether you have to bless us to close. 

 4 MR. KROEKER: I think Bob, committee members, 

 5 observers, thank you very much and the meeting is adjourned. 

 6 CHAIRMAN POZEN: Thank you, very much. 

 7 (The meeting was concluded at 11:50 a.m.) 

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EXHIBIT A 
Open Meeting of the 

SEC Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting 

Auditorium, Room L002, SEC Headquarters 

Washington, D.C. 

Thursday, August 2, 2007, Beginning at 10:00 A.M. 

 

AGENDA 

I. SEC Chairman Welcome and Introductory Remarks 

II. Additional Opening Remarks and Introductions 

a. Conrad W. Hewitt, Chief Accountant 

b. Robert Pozen, Committee Chair 

III. Presentation of Discussion Paper 

IV. Comments on Discussion Paper 

V. Conclusions and Next Steps 

VI. Adjourn (expected no later than 1 P.M.) 
EXHIBIT B 
Discussion Paper for Consideration by the SEC Advisory Committee on 

Improvements to Financial Reporting 

By Committee Chair Robert Pozen1

Draft dated July 31, 2007 

Introduction 

This white paper is provided as an outline for consideration and discussion by the 

Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to 

Financial Reporting (CIFiR). The purpose of the document is to provide a working 

outline, including a discussion of issues, views and potential consideration points that the 

Committee could evaluate. Additionally, the outline is structured in 5 key areas that 

could serve as a model for organizing the work of the Committee into subcommittees. 

Background 

The U.S. capital markets are the deepest and most liquid in the world. The acknowledged 

success of the U.S. capital markets, and their contribution to the nation’s economic 

vitality, has been due in no small measure to the availability of relevant, reliable, readily 

understandable, and timely financial information. However, while the U.S. financial 

reporting system has become the most complete and well developed in the world, some 

parts of the system may not be fully aligned with changes in the economy, business 

operations, technology and investor needs, leaving room for improvement. 

The strength of the U.S. financial reporting system lies in no small part in its inherent 

checks and balances, including the different perspectives of participants in the markets — 

direct participants (e.g., companies and investors), regulators, independent standard 

setters, and other third parties (e.g., attorneys, accountants and auditors). But these 

different and sometimes conflicting perspectives have contributed to some of the 

problems in the system, including its extreme complexity and the resulting need to 

consider how the usefulness of reported financial information can be improved. 

The SEC has charged the Committee with examining the U.S. financial reporting system 

to identify ways to improve the system of financial reporting. In considering this 

mandate, the Committee will consider ways to both reduce unnecessary complexity and 

make information more useful and understandable for investors. More specifically, the 

Committee’s charter identifies the following as areas of inquiry for the Committee: 

 

• The current approach to setting financial accounting and reporting standards, 

including (a) the principles-based vs. rules-based standards, (b) the inclusion 

within standards of exceptions, bright lines, and safe harbors, and (c) the process 

for providing timely guidance on implementation issues and emerging issues; 

 

1

 This draft discussion paper was prepared by Committee Chair Robert Pozen. It does not necessarily 

reflect any position or regulatory agenda of the Commission or its staff. 
• The current process of regulating compliance with accounting and reporting 

standards; 

• The current system for delivering financial information to investors and accessing 

that information; 

• Other environmental factors that drive unnecessary complexity, including the 

possibility of being second-guessed, the structuring of transactions to achieve an 

accounting result, and whether there is a hesitance by professionals to exercise 

professional judgment in the absence of detailed rules; 

• Whether there are current accounting and reporting standards that do not result in 

useful information to investors, or impose costs that outweigh the resulting 

benefits; and 

• Whether the growing use of international accounting standards has an impact on 

the relevant issues relating to complexity of U.S. accounting and reporting 

standards and the usefulness of the U.S. financial reporting system. 

As the Committee proceeds with its evaluation, it may wish to consider the financial 

reporting system in light of the needs of two primary groups – those who prepare the 

financial information and those who use the information – while taking into account the 

overall environmental impact of two secondary groups – those who opine on the 

information being presented and those who regulate our financial reporting system. 

Those who prepare financial information generally want: 

 

• Clear instructions on what subjects to cover in financial reports; 

• Not to be later second guessed by regulators, litigants, etc. in situations where 

reasonable/good faith judgments were made; 

• Financial reports to reflect the economic realities of the business, with enough 

flexibility to reflect the special situation of both the company and the industry; 

• To reduce period-to-period volatility of earnings to the extent feasible (for 

example, in situations where the volatility is driven by changes in estimates but 

where such volatility has not resulted in a “realized” gain or loss); and 

• To prepare required financial information at a reasonable cost, in terms of 

dollars and management time. 

Those who are users of financial information generally want: 

• To understand the financial reports, at the level of detail that is desired by each 

type of user; 

• To be able to rely on the integrity of the financial reports (and not be told later 

they were incomplete, misleading or actually wrong); 

• The financial reports to reflect the economic substance of the business, regardless 

of technical rules; 
• Financial reports to reflect, to the extent feasible, actual changes in market values 

from period to period; and 

• The reports to be delivered in a format that makes it easy to compare one 

company to another. 

 

Those who opine on the specific financial information presented generally want: 

• Clear instructions on what subjects to cover in financial reports; 

• Not to be later second guessed by regulators, litigants, etc. in situations where 

reasonable/good faith judgments were made; 

• The financial reports to reflect the economic substance of the business; and 

• To make a reasonable profit opining on financial information at a reasonable 

cost. 

Those who regulate the system generally want: 

• A financial reporting system that provides protection to investors, promotes 

market efficiency and facilitates capital formation 

• Clear instructions on what subjects to cover in financial reports; 

• To be able to rely on the integrity of the financial reports; 

• The financial reports to reflect the economic substance of the business; and 

• All of the above to be accomplished at a reasonable cost to society in relation to 

the benefits to be achieved. 

While the list of objectives above is only illustrative and certainly not all inclusive, one 

can observe that the objectives of those involved in our financial reporting system are 

consistent in many respects. All participants want clear guidelines that allow financial 

reports to be prepared and presented in a straightforward fashion, do not want financial 

reports to be subsequently deemed to be incorrect, want the financial reports to reflect the 

economic substance of the business, and do not want companies to spend too 

much money and management time on preparing financial reports. 

 

However, the Committee should recognize that some of the goals of participants within 

our financial reporting system may conflict. For example, preparers often want less 

volatility in earnings implying less fair value measures, while users generally prefer that 

more assets and liability reflect their current values. This places tension on the desire to 

have financial reports that reflect the economic substance of the entity. Further, users 

may prefer a uniform format that makes comparisons easy, while preparers may want 

special rules that allow them to present what they believe are the unique aspects of their 

industry or company. 

Upon conclusion of the Committee’s work, the Committee will provide written 

recommendations to the Chairman of the SEC on how to improve the financial reporting 

system in the U.S. These recommendations may cover many aspects of the financial 

reporting system for the Commission to consider, including recommendations that 

involve the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the Public Company 
Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and other appropriate organizations. In order to 

facilitate the Committee in forming these recommendations, the Committee will create 

subcommittees. The subcommittees will report their recommendations and advice to the 

Committee for full discussion and deliberation. The proposed subcommittees are listed 

below. Follow that listing of proposed subcommittees is a proposal regarding their 

objectives and some preliminary topics the subcommittees may wish to consider. 

 

I. Substantive Complexity 

 II. Standard Setting Process 

 III. Audit Process and Compliance 

 IV. Delivering Financial Information 

 V. International Coordination 

I. Substantive Complexity 

This subcommittee will study the causes and impact of complexity on financial 

accounting and reporting standards, including: (1) principles-based vs. rules-based 

standards; (2) inclusion within standards of exceptions, bright lines and safe harbors; and 

(3) the concerns of fair value measurement attributes and related earnings volatility. This 

subcommittee may wish to consider the following: 

Principles-Based Standards 

 Some commentators have suggested that the US should adopt more principles 

than detailed rules as a way to reduce complexity. However, other commentators 

have argued that both preparers and users may prefer bright line rules to avoid 

second guessing in the U.S. regulatory and litigation environment. In considering 

the need for principles and rules, the subcommittee may wish to evaluate the 

recent efforts of the FASB to move to a more principles-based approach while 

retaining implementation guidance. As a reference point, the subcommittee may 

wish to begin with the SEC staff’s 2003 report to Congress mandated by the 

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on a principles-based approach to standard setting in 

the U.S., and the FASB’s related response. 

Competing Principles 

Complexity may be created not by the adoption of principles versus rules, but 

rather as a result of competing principles. For example, U.S. GAAP is not 

consistent on the appropriate measurement attribute to use for valuing financial 

assets and liabilities. In areas like financial assets and liabilities, there are two 

basic principles: lower of cost or market, and fair value. The appropriate method 

to use in U.S. GAAP may be based on a specific industry, a specific transaction, a 

registrant expectation, or a registrant choice. To many it would be less complex 

to choose one approach, but many disagree which approach is most appropriate 

considering both relevance and reliability. More and more compromises are 

made, and these compromises lead to greater complexity as lines are drawn or 

judgments are made to delineate when one approach applies and the other does 

not. This subcommittee may wish to consider to what extent mixed measurement 

attributes (fair value versus historical cost) have increased complexity and 
reduced transparency, and what changes should be made within our capital 

markets to allow for more consistent measurement attributes. 

Preparers vs. Users 

Complexity also may result from conflicts between the objectives of preparers 

and users. From the perspective of sophisticated users, financial reports would be 

more useful if they contained more segment information in multi-line businesses. 

However, most companies are reluctant to have more reporting segments because 

this may involve the disclosure of competitively sensitive information. This 

subcommittee may wish to consider whether enhanced information would 

improve the usefulness of financial reporting in our capital markets. 

Industry Specific Exceptions 

Many industries have successfully obtained special treatment or exemptions from 

general accounting standards from the FASB or the SEC. While such exemptions 

or special treatment increase complexity, they, in many cases, may help preparers 

within these industries present their financial reports in ways that, in their view, 

better reflect the economic substance of their businesses than the general 

standards. This subcommittee may wish to consider whether industry specific 

accounting or disclosure is useful to our capital markets. 

Alternative Accounting Policies 

Currently, GAAP allows for entities to elect alternative accounting treatment for 

various transactions that may be economically similar. Most recently, the FASB 

issued SFAS 159, Fair Value Option, that allows companies to irrevocably elect 

to record certain types of assets and liabilities at fair value. This election is an 

instrument by instrument election. Other explicit options are currently present in 

U.S. GAAP. Providing companies with options may be a useful compromise 

when there are acceptable alternatives, but it makes it more difficult for users to 

compare companies. The subcommittee may wish to consider whether alternative 

accounting policies are useful to our capital markets. 

Sensitivity Analysis 

Financial reports are currently presented in a way that may over-simplify an issue 

with a complex range of results. In certain areas of accounting, the assumptions 

drive the results – for example, accounting for unfunded liabilities of defined 

benefit funds. Yet the range of permissible assumptions – for example, discount 

rates and mortality experience – is quite large. While sensitivity analyses are 

utilized to some degree, the subcommittee may wish to consider whether further 

sensitivity analyses would reduce complexity. 

II. Standard Setting Process 

This subcommittee will study the standard setting process and may wish to consider the 

following: 
U.S. GAAP Hierarchy 

Presently, all U.S. public companies must follow U.S. GAAP to be in compliance 

with applicable securities laws and regulations. Over the years, U.S. GAAP has 

been developed by many different recognized and unrecognized organizations. 

In the most recent past, these recognized organizations have included the SEC, the 

FASB, the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF), and the American Institute of 

Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Accounting Standards Executive 

Committee (AcSEC). For public companies, the authority to set GAAP resides 

with the SEC. The SEC has historically looked to private sector bodies to provide 

standards for financial reporting by public companies, and since 1973 the FASB 

has been recognized by the Commission for this role, absent any contrary 

determination by the Commission. In addition, the SEC at times will develop 

interpretive application and disclosure guidance for public companies. The FASB 

also allows for the EITF, which is subject to its own oversight by the FASB and 

the SEC, to develop interpretive application guidance to existing U.S. GAAP. 

The FASB has undertaken a significant project to develop a comprehensive and 

integrated codification of all existing accounting literature organized by subject 

matter that would become an easily retrievable single source for all of U.S. 

GAAP. This project may provide a useful roadmap for identifying those areas in 

U.S. GAAP that could be simplified. 

Characteristics of the FASB 

Currently in the U.S., accounting standards for public companies are established 

by the FASB, absent any contrary determination by the Commission, and the 

FASB is subject to oversight by the SEC. The Board consists of three members 

from public accounting, two from preparers, one from academia, and one user. 

While each member of the Board brings different experiences and perspectives, 

they are selected based on their expertise in financial reporting and are expected 

to make decisions based on what they believe will improve financial reporting 

rather than representing any one constituent group. All members of the Board 

must sever all ties and remain independent. The subcommittee may wish to 

consider the characteristics of Board members and the Board selection process. 

FASB Standard Setting Process 

The FASB has an open due process through which the Board obtains input from 

many constituents, issues proposals and receives extensive further input in the 

format of comment letters and holds public meetings with constituents. The 

Board makes all decisions on its accounting standards in public through open 

debate prior to reaching conclusion. This process can take many years, but was 

designed to provide constituents maximum input into the decisions of the Board. 

Currently, a simple majority vote is needed to complete projects. The Board 

publishes all decisions via board minutes on its website and as a basis for 

conclusions within all significant standards. 
The FASB develops major standards based on a conceptual framework. This 

conceptual framework was designed by previous Boards to act as fundamentals 

on which future financial accounting and reporting would be based. The 

conceptual framework, however, is not complete and is not consistent with all of 

existing U.S. GAAP. To address these issues, the FASB currently has a major 

project on its agenda jointly with the International Accounting Standards Board 

(IASB) to improve the conceptual framework and to readdress some major 

accounting standards where the application is not consistent with the conceptual 

framework or does not provide sufficiently transparent financial reporting. Areas 

being considered in this joint project include pensions, leasing, liabilities and 

equity, revenue recognition, and financial statement presentation. 

Accounting standards resulting from the FASB process often leave open 

many questions of interpretation. The underlying reason for the need for 

interpretation generally results from either a misunderstanding of the stated 

principle or rule, or a concern that others will express a different view of the 

application of the principle or rule within the standard. The FASB staff offers a 

service to respond to inquiries, but exercises caution in answering some inquiries 

due to the establishment of precedent. Sometimes the FASB or FASB staff is 

asked to formally amplify or clarify a set of interpretive issues within an 

accounting standard. These interpretations were previously published as FASB 

staff question and answer documents with little Board oversight and no public 

comment period. Currently, these interpretations are primarily done through FSPs 

(FASB staff positions), which are discussed and debated with Board members at a 

public meeting and exposed for comment. 

The subcommittee may wish to consider the process for setting standards and 

developing interpretations, including the FASB’s voting procedures and the 

methods used by the FASB or the FASB staff to: (1) set their agenda, (2) set their 

priorities, (3) deliberate, (4) communicate, and (5) respond to technical inquiries. 

Interpretive Guidance - EITF 

In the mid 1980s, the FASB formed the EITF. The original charter of the EITF 

was to act as an advisory group to the Board to educate the Board on emerging 

issues so that the Board could decide whether interpretive guidance was 

necessary. Shortly after its creation, the EITF’s charter was revised to allow for 

members of the EITF to develop authoritative interpretive guidance. The types of 

issues addressed by the EITF range from very specific to very broad, but are 

expected to be completed by the Task Force within one year. The EITF may only 

interpret existing standards and does not have the authority to amend or replace 

existing standards. Members of the EITF represent all significant constituents and 

include large and small preparers, large and small audit firms, and users. These 

members are volunteers and do not sever ties with their current employers or 

firms. The Chairman of the EITF is a member of the FASB staff and all 

documents produced for the EITF are developed by the FASB staff. A conclusion 

by the EITF is reached if not more than 3 members object. Currently, all 
conclusions by the EITF are exposed for public comment and are ratified by the 

FASB. This subcommittee may wish to consider the role of the EITF and 

whether that role should be changed to one of an advisory group. 

Interpretive Guidance – SEC 

The Commission itself sometimes addresses accounting issues directly. In 

addition, SEC staff primarily through the Office of the Chief Accountant 

(OCA) communicates to the public in various forms about accounting issues, 

including staff accounting bulletins, letters to industry, speeches, and other 

educational material. These sources of information often are viewed by the SEC 

staff as confirmations of existing accounting standards, but have led to 

restatements by public registrants. The OCA also receives requests from specific 

registrants for pre-review of accounting issues. These requests are often 

considered by others in determining their own accounting policies. 

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance reviews and comments on financial 

reports filed by public issuers that are not investment companies. The Division 

has a process for making its comment letters public upon completion of the 

review process. Through the Division’s filing review process and its now more 

transparent process making comment letters publicly available on the SEC’s 

website, the staff of Corporation Finance can have a significant influence on how 

accounting standards are interpreted. 

The SEC's Division of Enforcement, in the course of its investigatory and 

settlement negotiation processes, often explains the staff’s views of a registrant’s 

accounting conclusion. The Division’s communications in this regard have been 

viewed by some as representing views applicable to all companies and not just 

with respect to the individual facts and circumstances involving the party 

involved in the particular enforcement investigation. 

This subcommittee may wish to consider the extent to which the SEC should 

publish interpretive guidance, as well as the communication methods used to 

describe the activities of the SEC or the SEC staff. 

Interpretive Guidance – Other 

Many organizations, including large accounting firms and the AICPA, publish 

detailed educational material regarding accounting. These publications are widely 

used and presumed to be correct by their readers, but may turn out to be not 

always consistent or accurate. When an inconsistency or inaccuracy is 

discovered, the authors of the education material often seek clarity from the 

FASB or SEC staffs. This subcommittee may wish to consider whether the FASB 

or SEC should be involved reviewing or providing this type of guidance. 

The Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Standard Setting 

Determining the costs and benefits of a new accounting standard or rule involves 

difficult predictions. Often, the true costs and benefits may not be able to be fully 
known or understood until after the new standard or rule is fully implemented. 

The processes and practices both pre- and post-issuance may differ among 

organizations that set accounting standards and rules. The subcommittee may 

wish to review the existing cost-benefit analysis practices of appropriate 

organizations to determine if changes should be recommended. 

Existing Standards 

This subcommittee also may wish to consider whether to review two or three 

previously issued standards or rules to understand both the cost-benefit analysis 

that was utilized prior to the standard or rule’s exposure to public comment and 

the cost-benefit analysis that was utilized prior to adoption of the standard or rule. 

This subcommittee may wish to review whether any changes by the standard 

setter as a result of a given cost-benefit analysis or for ease of implementation 

actually reduced the costs of application or increased the benefits. Finally, the 

subcommittee may wish to consider two or three existing standards and determine 

whether any changes might be made to the standards to reduce the actual costs of 

application or improve the benefit to users. 

III. Audit Process and Compliance 

This subcommittee will study the current process of regulating compliance with the 

accounting and reporting standards and other environmental factors that drive 

unnecessary complexity, including the possibility of being second-guessed, the 

structuring of transactions to achieve an accounting result, and whether there is a 

hesitance on the part of professionals to exercise professional judgment in the absence of 

detailed rules. This subcommittee may wish to consider the following: 

Financial Restatements 

A significant number of restatements have occurred in the U.S. financial markets 

over the past few years. Some have attributed these restatements to more rigorous 

interpretations of accounting and reporting standards by preparers, outside 

auditors, the SEC, and the PCAOB, while others believe the concept of 

materiality (and discussions regarding materiality in SEC Staff Accounting 

Bulletins 99 and 108) is applied too broadly. Many believe that this increased 

volume of restatements makes it more difficult for securities analysts and other 

users of financial information to determine the significance of a restatement. 

Further, some have expressed concern that the high volume of restatements could 

lead to an environment where users of financial reports begin discounting the 

importance of restatements (for example, if restatements are viewed to be 

routine). 

The U.S. Treasury has announced it is commissioning a study to determine why 

the volume of financial restatements has risen so sharply, and this subcommittee 

should monitor the U.S. Treasury’s work in this regard. This subcommittee also 

may wish to consider the reasons for an increase in restatements. For example, 

the subcommittee might consider whether the increase is a result of: (1) a broad 

application of the definition of materiality (including the application of materiality 
guidance in situations where errors do not impact the “bottom line”); (2) more 

rigorous auditing or enforcement; (3) second guessing by the SEC, the PCAOB, 

or outside auditors; (4) increasingly detailed accounting standards; or (5) 

inappropriate application of standards by preparers/auditors. Further, the 

subcommittee may wish to consider whether there are alternative methods to 

communicate with the capital markets for certain types of accounting errors 

(including consideration of the potential for prospective methods to deal with 

making changes to historical accounting practices). 

Use of Judgment 

Any move toward reducing complexity and increasing transparency should 

consider the role of preparer and auditor judgment as it relates to the reduction of 

prescriptive application guidance. For example, one approach to consider could 

be whether to expand the use of accounting and auditing standards that allow for 

more judgment in application. The subcommittee should also consider the role of 

disclosure in such an environment. For example, some have suggested that more 

latitude should be provided in standards, with the caveat that more disclosure is 

provided about the alternative(s) that were considered and why the selected 

alternative was applied. This subcommittee may wish to consider whether an 

increase in the use of judgment (elimination of bright lines and detailed 

application guidance) would result in increased usefulness of financial reports, 

including the potential impact on comparability. Furthermore, the subcommittee 

may wish to consider whether an increase in judgment on the part of preparers 

and auditors is impacted by not knowing or understanding how these groups will 

be judged by the SEC, the PCAOB or others. 

PCAOB 

The PCAOB is required to inspect annually all registered public accounting firms 

that provide audit reports for more than 100 public companies, and at least 

triennially registered public accounting firms that provide audit reports for fewer 

than 100 issuers. Reports on these inspections have been produced in many cases 

more than one year after the completion of the inspections. Pursuant to the 

Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a portion of the results of the inspections are made available 

publicly, and certain nonpublic portions of the reports may remain nonpublic if 

the firm responds to the criticisms to the Board’s satisfaction within a given time 

period. 

Similar to the FASB, the PCAOB receives requests for guidance on how audits 

should be carried out. In the case of internal control reviews, the PCAOB issued 

a series of questions and answers, which were generally well received. 

Nevertheless, these questions and answers were issued without advance notice or 

public comment, despite the fact they were intended to have general applicability. 

This subcommittee may wish to consider the PCAOB’s inspection process and 

how the process impacts registrant and auditor behavior. The subcommittee may 

also want to consider whether this creates the need for additional auditing and 
accounting interpretive guidance, as well as the process on how such guidance is 

issued. 

SEC – Corporation Finance 

The SEC is required to review filings by listed public issuers on a regular and 

systemic basis, as well as review all public companies required to file reports at 

least once every three years. These reviews may be time consuming and are 

conducted by the SEC Division of Corporation Finance. A perception may exist 

that consultation with the OCA does not generally occur unless the registrant 

requests such consultation. This subcommittee may wish to understand the 

process the SEC uses to review registrants’ public filings, including the process 

for providing comments and the level of review and coordination with the various 

departments of the SEC. Furthermore, the subcommittee may wish to consider 

whether and how the process impacts registrant and auditor behavior and creates 

the need for additional auditing and accounting interpretive guidance. 

SEC – Division of Enforcement 

The Division of Enforcement has broad authority to open an informal inquiry into 

a registrant’s financial reporting or an auditor’s application of professional 

standards with respect to registrant reporting. Formal investigations that provide 

subpoena authority are made only after approval by the Commission. The OCA is 

generally consulted before consideration by the Commission of a 

recommendation by the Division of Enforcement involving financial reporting or 

auditor misconduct. This subcommittee may wish to understand the process the 

SEC uses to open an enforcement investigation, including the level and timing of 

coordination with the various departments of the SEC. Furthermore, the 

subcommittee may wish to consider how the process impacts registrant and 

auditor behavior and affects the need for additional auditing and accounting 

interpretive guidance. 

Audit Firms 

This subcommittee may wish to consider whether the behavior of audit firms 

creates or results in unnecessary complexity. For example, to promote efficient 

and effective audits, audit firms have created various tools and controls so that a 

uniform policy is applied throughout their organizations. These include 

checklists, audit programs, training, and networks of subject matter experts. 

These subject matter experts tend to view their particular issue as very important 

and may insist on a uniform national policy, even if the recommended approach is 

not applied uniformly in practice by others outside the firm. This subcommittee 

may wish to consider the impact that these practices have on promoting judgment 

and transparent reporting in the capital markets. 

Sustainability of the Audit Profession 

Legal risks faced by audit firms and registrants clearly influence their behavior in 

preparing and auditing financial reports, including their willingness to exercise 

judgment and to show flexibility in applying accounting rules. With respect to 
audit firms, the U.S. Treasury has announced its intention to establish an advisory 

committee to study the sustainability of a strong and vibrant public company 

auditing profession. Treasury has announced that the committee is to study, 

among other things, the ability to attract and retain the human capital necessary to 

meet developments in the business and financial reporting environment; audit 

market competition and concentration; and the financial resources of the auditing 

profession, including the effect of existing limitations on auditing firms’ structure. 

This subcommittee should be aware of how litigation and potential litigation 

influence behavior and may wish to consider the work of the Treasury’s 

committee, but should not attempt to develop proposals that duplicate the work of 

that committee. 

IV. Delivering Financial Information 

This subcommittee will study the current system for delivering financial information to 

investors and accessing that information. This subcommittee may wish to consider the 

following: 

Tiering of Information 

Different groups of investors exist in our capital markets and may have different 

needs for information from financial reports. The individual investor may be 

interested mainly in a journalistic outline of the key points about the progress of 

the business. By contrast, a sophisticated investor may be interested in a full 

discussion of management's choice of assumptions underlying the financial 

reports as well as a comparative analysis of particular financial indicators versus a 

peer universe. Many have suggested tiering the information with a journalistic 

summary at the beginning and more detailed analyses as the reader continues to 

read. Within the context of the Internet, this could mean a summary page, 

together with hyperlinks to more detailed information on particular topics. 

Tagging of Information 

The SEC is engaged in a major project to introduce interactive data tagging 

technology for the informational content of financial reports, such as through the 

use of XBRL, so that users have the ability to quickly and easily focus on the 

important information they desire in these reports. Moreover, tagging of 

information may allow investors to customize their needs based on their desired 

level of detail. The tagging of information can be focused on performance 

metrics for carrying out the strategy of a specific company and could be designed 

along the lines of a balanced scorecard. The tagging of information can be 

organized into a variety of standard formats for key performance indicators 

(KPIs) organized by industry. An existing project for the development of these 

KPIs is being undertaken by a non-profit consortium on enhanced business 

reporting (originally started under the AICPA). The subcommittee may wish to 

study these developments and consider whether additional recommendations can 

be made to improve the usefulness of financial reporting in these areas. 
Press Releases and Website Disclosure 

Press releases and corporate websites have become important forms of 

communication for many public companies. For example, some companies post 

or issue press releases to report interim and annual results and in doing so often 

release non-GAAP financial measures. These operating results are often issued 

well before the formal operating results and disclosure are required to be filed 

with the SEC, and they may contain additional information that is not required to 

be filed. Recently as a result of implementing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the SEC 

revised its rules and regulations concerning the public disclosure of non-GAAP 

financial measures, including in press releases and earnings webcasts, and 

whether press releases also must be filed versus furnished with the SEC. This 

subcommittee may wish to consider the underlying reasons why press releases 

and web disclosures—and the information contained in them—are used by our 

capital markets in order to determine if additional performance indicators would 

be useful for our capital markets. In addition, the subcommittee may wish to 

consider the experience of issuers with disclosure of non-GAAP information and 

the use of press releases and corporate websites in connection with their financial 

reports. The continued demand for these disclosures by issuers may suggest that 

the required formats for reporting financial information are not serving all the 

needs of preparers and users. 

Legal Issues 

To provide various forms of communications that meet the needs of different 

investor groups, there may be a need to consider the legal liabilities for different 

types of information – e.g., MD&A versus audited income statements – and for 

the different communication methods used to provide them. For example, this 

subcommittee may wish to look at the experience with "free writing" in public 

offerings whereby issuers can communicate new developments or pieces of 

information that may not be included in the formal prospectus. Further, this 

subcommittee may wish to look at the various attempts to provide a summary 

prospectus in the mutual fund industry. 

V. International Coordination 

This subcommittee should consider whether the growing use of international accounting 

standards has an impact on the relevant issues relating to complexity of U.S. accounting 

standards and the usefulness of the U.S. financial reporting system (for example, by 

identifying best practice employed internationally). As it relates to the acceptance of 

International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, in the U.S. capital markets, the 

SEC has issued a proposing release to permit the use of IFRS by foreign private issuers 

without a U.S. GAAP reconciliation. In addition, the SEC has voted to issue a concept 

release on whether U.S. issuers should be allowed the choice to use IFRS to satisfy their 

SEC reporting requirements. The SEC expects to receive important feedback on these 

initiatives that could be considered by this subcommittee. Each of the four other 

subcommittees should consider whether there are areas or international best practice that 

should be evaluated by the international subcommittee for implementation in the U.S. 

financial reporting system. Given the timing of the expected comment letter process on 
the Commission’s initiatives, and in order of the other subcommittees to identify areas of 

focus, the substantive research and analysis of this subcommittee will not begin until 

early 2008. While the nature of the items considered by this committee has not been 

fully developed, the subcommittee may wish to consider the following: 

Standard Setting Approach 

This committee should consider whether there are “best practices” employed by 

the IASB in the standard setting process. For example, many believe the IASB 

takes an approach based more on principles rather than detailed rules, but the 

IASB, like the FASB, nevertheless does have conflicting principles and 

controversies based on volatility and the increased use of fair value. Many have 

observed that the accounting standards promulgated by the FASB are too lengthy. 

This is partly because the FASB includes in its standards not only the text, but 

also its history and the responses to significant comments on the initial proposal 

and implementation guidance. By contrast, IFRS generally include only the text 

in its accounting standards. The FASB has already started to work together with 

the IASB in formulating new accounting standards or revising existing standards 

in the hopes that future standards will be converged. The subcommittee may wish 

to consider a few examples where the FASB and the IASB are working together 

to determine if the process is effective and efficient to meet the needs of our 

capital markets. 

Regulation 

The enforcement of accounting standards outside the U.S. may be quite different 

depending on the particular jurisdiction from the enforcement policies and 

practices within the U.S. The subcommittee may wish to consider these 

differences and determine whether the U.S. system could benefit from any lessons 

from the foreign experience. 
EXHIBIT C 
Index of Written Statements Received 

Listed below are the written statements received by the Advisory Committee 

before its first meeting on August 2, 2007 and the dates of receipt. 

Aug. 1, 2007 Walter P. Schuetze 

Aug. 1, 2007 Ralph D. Allen, Managing Partner, BeaconAdvisors, Financial Communication 

experts, South Salem, New York 

Jul. 28, 2006 Gordon E. Goodman, Trading Control Officer, Occidental Petroleum