IOSCo, the SEC in a separate study, and the FASB approved the second IASC plan. Industry watchers are confident that the EU will have to relent, not just because the entire rest of the world wants standardization but also because of pressure from European corporations that don't want to waste the money keeping two sets of books. It has asked for opinions on the accounting standards themselves and also on the auditing, record-keeping, and educational programs that will be needed to support the standards. If this sounds like much ado about nothing, don't be fooled. Standardization of accounting practices is one of the keys to seamless capital markets.
Investors have to be able to compare apples to apples when making their investment decisions.
That's impossible if you compare a company using GAAP accounting to a company using German accounting. The more everybody has access to the same information, the more efficiently the markets operate. They never come to us unless they're selling a new issue, but they said they didn't have one. John Lee, Scudder's Korea portfolio manager, is working with a Korean university to teach Korean companies about developing their shareholder relations. Even within the EU's borders, the market seems to be taking the matter of investor information into its own hands.