Enron's global fallout: failure to adopt uniform International Accounting Standards complicate the comparison of foreign companies with their U.S. peers. (Global Marketplace).

Research, June, 2002 by Bayer, Alexei

THE QUEST FOR UNIFIED accounting and reporting standards has gone on for quite some time. In fact, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) was set up back in 1973. Even three decades ago there was a perceived need to develop a single national and cross-border financial accounting system that could allow comparisons of financial performance in different countries.

The need for such a system intensifled during the 1990s, when stock markets expanded, transnational investment flows increased and listing in several equity markets became an accepted practice. In the United States, for example, 18 percent of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and more than 10 percent of companies listed on Nasdaq were foreign-based as of 1999. European...

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