Harmonica
With the rapid growth of international capital markets and increased cross-border financing, the debate over harmonization has intensified. Supporters of has intensified reason that harmonization of accounting standards is necessary to produce comparability across financial statements worldwide. Opponents of harmonization argue that differences in financial reporting are justified due to the differing economic, political ,legal ,and cultural environments across countries, making the adoption of a global standard not truly valuable to users of financial statements.
1.you are on the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and must make a presentation to a national capital market regulator (e.g., the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), or the Japanese Ministry of finance) national accounting standard –setter (e.g., the Canadian Accounting Standards Board, or the Nigerian Financial Accounting Standards Board ) stating why harmonization of accounting standards is desir-able. You have one Week to prepare for these presentations, and you are drafting your speech. Make your case, pointing out at least three arguments in favor of harmonization.
2.You are a Financial analyst and consultant to Merrill Lynch based in the United Kingdom. You job is to recommend which stocks the company should include in its portfolio. Over the last 15 years, You have analyzed hundreds of corporate annual reports and have gained a great wealth of knowledge about Japanese and German accounting Standards, along with their economic, political, legal, and cultural environment s. You boss is convinced that international accounting standards will soon emerge as the global standard and, conse-quently, has asked you to use only IAS-based financial statements in your analysis. Make a case on why using only IAS-based standards may not be an appropriate measure of the operating performance of a company.
3.Based upon your responses to both scenarios, should harmonization be pursued? If yes, to what extent? Explain.