Deutsche Bank, which moved from reporting in U.S. GAAP to reporting in IFRS at beginning of 2007, went through its own conversion process mainly during 2006. The conversion involved the consolidation of an additional 200 SPEs onto the bank's corporate balance sheet.

That's because, under IFRS, the bank couldn't treat most of them as the off-balance-sheet, Qualified Special Purpose Entities that it could treat them as under GAAP. The bank's accountants found during the conversion that not having "the specific rules that could give you a very clear 'yes' or 'no' answer under U.S. GAAP required us to step back and look at the entity as an entirety," Jones said.

Achieving that "holistic" view was "more difficult, more work," she said. "But on balance it gives you a more realistic answer of what's going on."

For his part, Cox seemed to feel that IFRS had passed an important test. "In the financial services sector, IFRS worked well during the subprime crisis--at least as well, perhaps better than U.S GAAP. It kept SPES on the balance sheet to a far greater extent than U.S. GAAP, which made it possible to structure QSPEs to keep them off the balance sheet," he said. Despite the glowing send-off, however, the commissioner seemed no closer to shooting the starting pistol to launch the conversion to IFRS.

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