Conversely, Martyn Webster of XenoPort Inc. wrote: "If the U.S. remains outside of the IFRS framework, then we will somewhat compromise our ability to participate in, and influence, important matters related to the overall operations of global capital markets."

A new Deloitte survey that polled 150 corporate finance executives concluded that 51% of the respondents would support the SEC's roadmap for adopting IFRS if the regulator considered pushing back the mandatory deadline a year, to 2015. Nineteen percent said they supported the roadmap "as is," while 15% rejected the proposal. The remaining executives said they were unsure how the SEC should proceed.

Tweedie contends that while some critics claim the SEC will lose power if American companies switch to IFRS, the opposite is true. "The SEC will increase power" if the U.S. moves to IFRS, he says. "The beauty of the SEC is that it is one of the world's most effective regulators, and that puts peer pressure on others."

That pressure will extend to private companies as well, noted D.J. Gannon, a Deloitte partner and the firm's IFRS expert, who also took part in the press briefing. He said that once the SEC acts to require public companies to file results using IFRS, larger private companies will follow in order to keep up with the competition. In addition, lenders to smaller private companies will demand it from their borrowers. "It will take time; we are not going to go from zero to 60 in three months," noted Gannon, who thinks that over the next few years, momentum to use IFRS will grow.

It wasn't until recently that the SEC weighed in on the progress of its own roadmap. Since becoming SEC chair in late January, Mary Schapiro had remained quiet on the subject of the roadmap, a project her Republican predecessor, Christopher Cox, launched during his term. Schapiro's silence led some observers to believe the SEC was backing off from IFRS altogether.

But recent public statements made by Schapiro and James Kroeker, the SEC's chief accountant, assured constituents that the IFRS project had a green light. Schapiro's silence was a way of "establishing her territory [and] showing she was not doing the bidding of the previous Administration," contends Epstein. "I don't think it is possible to stop [the move to IFRS] or delay it. It costs money to keep companies in limbo."

Others, including Charles Niemeier, a member and former acting chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, have criticized the "rush" to deploy IFRS in the United States. For his part, Niemeier would like to see the IASB-FASB convergence project finished before requiring U.S. companies to file in IFRS. That, he thinks, would ensure that the combined standards remain stringent.

A precipitous exit from GAAP undermines the U.S. regulatory system and places "in jeopardy the thing that gives the U.S. a competitive advantage," he noted at an industry meeting in 2008. "All research shows that the U.S. is unique in its regulation. No [country] is as effective.... We have the lowest cost of capital in the world. Do we really want to give that up?"

Additional reporting by David McCann and Jason Karaian.

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