State must lead way on switch in firms' accounts

When EBS announced its results recently, one feature attracted very little attention even though it fundamentally altered the profit figures reported by the society.

The building society's top line shows a profit of €62.6 million. If the accounts had been prepared in the same way as they had in 2002, the figure would have been €49 million.

That is some difference but, before people start crying foul and running for a regulator, they should know that the society has done nothing untoward. It has simply altered the way it accounts for goodwill on acquisitions made during the year. As it happens, the change may have raised the top line figure but it reduced the year-on-year rate of growth.

The experience of EBS illustrates the degree to which accounting standards can alter the way company figures look. It is an issue very much to the fore just now as the European Union has decided that, from next year, all listed companies in the EU will have to present their accounts under new rules set out by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

The new regime, IFRS or International Financial Reporting Standards, hopes to standardise the way company accounts are presented throughout the EU and even further afield.

EBS chief executive Mr Ted McGovern says the effort involved in the transition is enormous. "My finance people tell me that this change will, as far as the accounting side of business is concerned, have a bigger impact than Y2K and the introduction of the euro combined," he says.

That illustrates the importance to the accounting industry of getting their systems in order now. Moving the IFRS will involve investment in training and systems.

Part of the problem is that conflicting accounting standards will remain, depending on the nature of the business. While the IASB rules will apply to all listed companies, local subsidiaries of those companies are governed by accounting standards set down on a country by country basis - in our case by the British Accounting Standards Board.

This means that accountants in Ireland face the prospect of having to prepare two sets of books - one for the listed parent under IFRS and another under Irish Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) laid down for Britain and Ireland in relation to subsidiary operations. "It is a nonsense," says Mr Terence O'Rourke, deputy president of the largest Irish accountants' professional body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI). "We need the Government to make a decision on whether they will move all companies to IFRS or not.

"Ideally, we would like to see a situation where the Government lays down a timetable to move everyone to the new system but, even if it is reluctant to do that, we would like to see it give companies the right to opt for the new system if they so choose. The worst scenario is the one we have at present where the Government is saying nothing and leaving companies up in the air as to what sort of accounts they will have to prepare.

"While the new regime does not kick in until next year, companies using it will need to prepare 2004 figures on the same basis if only for the purposes of comparison," says Mr O'Rourke. "What we really need is for the Government to get its finger out."

Preserving the two-track system, he argues, only leaves open the potential for error and the damage that can do to the reputation of companies. It also leaves companies facing higher costs as they may need to produce accounts under two sets of rules.

The Government is reluctant to be seen as getting out of step with Britain, whose lead it has generally followed in terms of financial regulation. That would leave it allowing companies to make their own choices, as it has indicated it is minded to do.

However, Mr O'Rourke argues that this misses the point.

At the moment in the EU, there are 14 different sets of accounting standard. "If applied to a single company, these would be capable of producing divergent sets of results," he says. This acts as an impediment to the idea of a single market, even before the introduction of more diversity in accounting standards with the accession of the EU's 10 new members in May.

"It also acts as an impediment to the transparency about company performance that recent scandals have shown to be necessary," he adds.

While the idea of agreeing more widely accepted common accounting standards pre-dates the Enron debacle that triggered a crisis for corporate accounting in the US and beyond - including the collapse of Elan's value due to concerns about accounting methods - it is accepted that those problems have reinvigorated the process.

One example has been the renewed efforts of the IASB and its US counterpart, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), to create a convergence programme which might ultimately lead to one universally accepted way of presenting accounts.

One risk is that the IASB succumbs to political lobbying in the same way that the FASB was undermined in relation to the treatment of stock options in the 1990s. That opened the door for the corporate greed that has done so much damage since.

France is currently lobbying against rules designed to increase transparency in the banking system and Japan is complaining that the IASB, headed by the widely respected Sir David Tweedie, is overly influenced by the needs of the EU, the largest trading zone outside the US.

For now, however, the IASB is holding the line and its methodology is seen as the way forward.

"International standards are the way the world is moving - over 65 countries are committed to using the standards, and plans are in place for convergence with US standards," says Mr O'Rourke.

"The ICAI believes that Ireland, as an open economy dependent on foreign investment and as holder of the EU Presidency, should be at the forefront of this move."