Cross-border: Equity Capital Markets

published in the Official Journal on 9 March 2007 (OJ L 69, 9.3.2007, p. 27).

On 25th September, 2001 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rule amendments that will require non-US companies to use the SEC electronic filing system EDGAR instead of submitting paper documents.

On 31 March 2008, the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) published its advice to the European Commission on the equivalence of US, Japanese and Chinese GAAP to EU adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The advice reflects the December 2007 consultation paper (see PLC Legal update, Equivalence of Chinese, Japanese and US GAAPs to IFRS: CESR consultation ) with CESR recommending that the Commission: (1) Find US GAAP equivalent to IFRS. (2) By June 2008 should consider Japanese GAAP equivalent to IFRS unless there is no adequate evidence of the Accounting Standards Board of Japan achieving the timetable agreed with the IASB to accelerate convergence between Japanese GAAP and IFRS (the Tokyo Agreement). (3) Postpone a final decision on Chinese GAAP until there is more information on the application of the new Chinese accounting standards by Chinese issuers. The first complete reporting period under the new Chinese standards will only be for 2007 accounting periods and CESR believes that evidence of adequate implementation is important in the context of an outcome-based definition of equivalence. CESR intends to undertake additional work to assess whether Chinese GAAP has been properly applied by Chinese issuers. Background: the Prospectus (2003/71/EC) and Transparency (2004/109/EC) Directives require the Commission to establish by mid-2008 whether the GAAP of a given non-EU country is equivalent to IFRS. Regulation (EC) No 1

On 15 November 2007 the SEC announced that it had decided to amend its rules to allow foreign private issuers in the US to file financial statements prepared under IFRS without reconciliation to US GAAP. The rule amendments will take effect 60 days after they are published in the Federal Register and will apply to financial statements covering years ended after 15 November 2007. The IASB welcomes the change as an important step towards achieving its goal of developing "a single, high-quality language for financial reporting that is accepted through the world's capital markets". Countries that have already adopted IFRS include the EU countries, Hong Kong, Australia and South Africa. Countries who have announced a timetable for adopting IFRS, or converging their national accounting standards with IFRS, include India, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Canada.

The FSA is the regulator for the UK financial services industry and the competent authority for listing in the UK (UKLA). The site contains a wide range of materials, including the FSA Handbook.

On 6 December 2006 the Commission announced that, in addition to the regulation to amend the Prospectus Regulation (see PLC Legal update, Prospectus Regulation: final regulation to postpone the equivalence decision), it had adopted its final decision pursuant to the Transparency Directive to extend by 2 years the transitional exemption granted to certain third country issuers from the obligation to prepare annual or half-yearly financial statements in accordance with IFRS (for background see PLC Legal update, Transparency Directive and Prospectus Regulation: draft decision and regulation to postpone the equivalence decision). The final decision was published in the Official Journal on 8 December 2006.