While U.S. financial executives are buried in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, their counterparts in Europe are racing against a deadline to overhaul entire accounting methods—a shift Ernst & Young called “the biggest change in financial reporting in a generation and on a global basis.”
The European Union has set Jan. 1, 2005, as the date by which some 7,000 public companies under EU authority must begin reporting financials using International Financial Reporting Standards. The published standards span more than 3,000 pages. E&Y published a guide to IFRS that is more than 2,000 pages long.
