The G20 this week in Pittsburgh will reaffirm its mantra, that accounting standard-setters should make progress towards “a single set of high-quality global accounting standards”. But doubts are emerging about both global accounting harmonisation and standards quality, measured against the information needs of the financial reporting audience.

Last October, the International Accounting Standards Board, its hand forced by the European Union, enabled banks to limit their use of fair value (aka mark to market) accounting and avoid reporting losses if market conditions deteriorated. In April, under pressure from Congress, the Financial Accounting Standards Board in turn adopted changes to its financial instruments standard, allowing banks to not book some of the bad news.