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Non-Tech : Derivatives: Darth Vader's Revenge -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Enigma who wrote (305)	10/2/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2794

e, regarding foreign accounting standards you say only now are we hearing how lax they are. Actually it has been a pretty common complaint among the accounting profession as long as I have been in business. I have certainly know of these concerns long enough that I have avoided any direct investments in most Asian markets, but then I actually read FASB proposals. The reason more people aren't aware of the issue is that accounting is a pretty dry subject and most people don't pay attention during good times. You say it would be interesting to know what efforts were made by international auditors to put pressure on the Japanese to change their accounting standards. There is actually a very concerted effort to upgrade international accounting standards. There is an international agency dedicated to this and some progress has been made in recent years. But it is a very dry and obscure topic that a lot of people ignore and politicians never help by putting pressure on the counterparts. And accounting standards can get very politicized. American and European multi nationals operating in Japan through subsidaries must have had a local auditors report published in Japan - but I"d be pretty sure there was never any qualification of the consolidated financial statements with respect to the differences between the jurisdictions. Actually these are reconciled. These firms will use local standards to produce statements for local tax purposes. But then they will need to make any subsidiary statements that will be consolodated into the parents accounts conform to home country accounting standards. It actually gets quite complicated maintaining multiple books and it generates significant issues regarding cross border tax payments. I bet that is more about international accounting than you ever wanted to know. Henry