The Financial Times, on Tuesday, April 13, 2004, made the following comment in its editorial "Parmalat: Perennial Lessons of European Scandal: Urgent need for better enforcement and investor scepticism:

"After the accounting scandals in the US, there was an unseemly amount of crowing in Europe. As it happens, Parmalat is a much older scandal than Enron or WorldCom. It just took longer to come out at the Italian dairy company.... Convergence of standards—in accounting, for instance—will help spread best practice. So will high level meetings between regulators, such as take place within the International Organisation of Securities Commission. But we are nowhere near having a world super-regulator.... In Italy regulation has been weak because of fragmentation and lack of clout and resources. Attempts to tackle this and to ensure regulators' independence from political interference should be urgently pursued." (p. 12)

Required:

Discuss the lessons referred to above concerning the objectives of the current efforts at setting global standards for accounting and financial reporting.