Member of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board Michael Crooch participated at the Roundtable “US GAAP: Recent and Expected Changes”.

Member of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board Michael Crooch participated at the Roundtable “US GAAP: Recent and Expected Changes” organized by the NOFA Foundation together with the Higher School of Economics. NOFA Foundation panel on the international standards implementation issues continued its work. Michael Crooch, was specially invited to participate in the September meeting on the topic “US GAAP: Recent and Expected Changes”. Biographical Information Michael Crooch was appointed to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in July 2000. Prior to joining the Board, Mr. Crooch was a partner in Arthur Andersen where he was the Director of International Accounting Principles in the firm’s Professional Standard Group. Mr. Crooch was the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) representative to the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) and served on the IASC Executive Committee. He has served as a member and Chairman of the AICPA Accounting Standards Executive Committee (AcSec). He also is a former member of the American Accounting Association Financial Accounting Standards Committee. Mr. Crooch earned a B.S. and M.S. in accounting from Oklahoma State University and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Before joining Arthur Andersen, Mr. Crooch was a Professor of Accounting at Oklahoma State University. Michael Kiselev, Chairman of the NOFA Foundation Standards Board opened the panel discussion: “Not too long ago the NOFA Foundation Standards Board started the implementation of a project on the development of Russian financial reporting standards approximating IFRS. Experience of national standards boards of other countries that have been working successfully for a long time is extremely important for us. The goal of today’s panel is to get information on new developments in US GAAP, on how FASB working procedures are organized, what the perspectives and issues in the American standards development are”. Michael Crooch started with a discussion of the main processes going on within the framework of US GAAP improvement . FASB is implementing US GAAP codification project. Many users noted excessive complexity of American standards structure – provisions pertaining to the same topic are scattered over different standards. To solve this problem the standards are being sorted by topic. The process of US GAAP and IFRS convergence is one of the most important topics of the past few years. As Michael Crooch noted, work in this direction is not always successful, since often IASB and FASB disagree not only between themselves, but also inside. However both Boards are moving towards their goal – removal of significant inconsistencies between the American and the European sets of standards. The Boards in their convergence effort are guided by two documents: Memorandum of Understanding signed in Norfolk and the so-called “Roadmap” (list of necessary steps). Consent of the US Securities and Exchange Commission has already been obtained to accept beginning with 2009 European companies’ financial statements under IFRS without reconciliation with US GAAP, which is mandatory now. At the same time the Securities and Exchange Commission emphasizes the necessity of one IFRS set irrespective of the particular country. Michael Crooch said that currently a number of joint projects with IASB are on the current FASB agenda. Among them: Conceptual framework, Purchase method procedures, Financial statements presentation, Revenue recognition, Lease. Work at the Liability and Equity standard is going on with FASB in the leading role. IASB plays the leading role in the development of Insurance products project. Work on special convergence projects is being carried out: Income tax, Earnings per share. FASB current agenda on the development of American financial reporting standards includes the following topics: Pension liabilities, Fair value options, Disclosure of financial derivatives information, Business combination, Transfer of insurance risk, Accounting at fair value, Transfer of financial assets, Indefinite tax position.