Have US corporations lobbied against the US adoption of international financial reporting standards?

I think the US corporations have lobbied against the US adoption of international financial reporting standards.  The key issue to understand is the reason why corporations want to become involved in lobbying of the accounting standard process. The answer lies in the fact that the accounting standards set out mandatory rules for recording business transactions – e.g. they control when sales revenues can be recognised/ recorded as a sale in the accounts of the corporation.

If the standard rules are too restrictive or difficult to comply with, then corporation may be required to delay the recognition of some sales to a later financial reporting period – this delay would meant that the current overall profits of the corporation would fall.

Another example is the valuation of assets . The US accounting standard developed by the FASB, required banks to record their asset values at their market value. The back directors were very unhappy at this rule within the standard as they argued that they should be able to value their assets at Directors’ valuation –i.e. that the Directors should have total control of the asset values not the market. Again Directors were concerned here because low asset values could prevent investors from buying shares in the company and could also prevent banks from lending money.

Thus, it’s important to remember the connection between the rules in accounting standards and their impact then on the final accounting numbers – sales and asset values – in the financial reports for the listed companies.