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When Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson unveiled step one of his Capital Markets Plan this morning, it set our staff humming in more ways than one.
The details will come in an 11:30 speech this morning by U. S. Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Robert K. Steel (with coverage from CFO.com to follow shortly), but the outline appeared in a Op-Ed in the Financial Times. Being financial journalists, and with an ex-Wall Street Journal editor on staff, we take a professional interest in Paulson's choice of media outlets (it's not the first time he's shown a preference for the FT.
But if you're basically promoting the global competitiveness of Wall Street, it makes more sense to put that message out in the nominally more global FT than in Wall Street's own eponymous journal. Paulson's message is aimed at the City of London as much as New York City.
Not to read too much into this, but it's just one more indicator that Paulson and others, notably the SEC's Cox, aren't just reacting to what they might view as the regulatory overreaching epitomized by Sarbanes-Oxley — they're really serious about adopting a globalized view.
Cox is just recently back from a European tour that pushed for cooperation between U.S. and European securities regulators. And note how Paulson cites Cox's as "instrumental" in pushing for accounting convergence. He also quotes the SEC as moving "toward a future regulatory framework in which IFRS may be used on a stand-alone basis by foreign private issuers and possibly also by US issuers."
Choosing between IFRS or GAAP? It's just a matter of time.
A colleague has just pointed out to me, correctly, that this blog paints the FT in a favorable light, and thus should note that CFO is a corporate cousin of the FT.
Very true, I should have, so here goes: CFO.com is a division of CFO Publishing which is owned by The Economist Group. The Financial Times Limited, a Pearson subsidiary, owns 50 percent of the share capital of The Economist Group, but does not have a controlling interest.
I hope the fact that I had to look that up — and am still not entirely sure I understand it — is sufficient proof that corporate consanguinity was not the reason for my comments.