After their meeting last week in Washington, D.C., the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G20) issued a 14-point communique in which they expressed their support for “the efforts of the IASB and FASB to achieve convergence to a globally accepted set of high quality accounting standards,” and urged them to meet their target on key convergence projects “by mid-2013, at the latest, in order to achieve a single set of high quality international accounting standards.”

Reading between the lines. The G20’s endorsement of the FASB/IASB convergence project could essentially buy the SEC more time in deciding how and when to permit U.S.-based public companies to use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) rather than the traditional GAAP, at least for purposes of their SEC filings, says a recent FEI post. “Or this statement of the G20 Finance Ministers could potentially be relied upon as showing geopolitical support for an extended implementation timetable by the SEC.”