I would like someone to please summarize the following 5 pages (304-308) into 1 page

304 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff but reinforcing our suggestion in Section 4.2 we propose that academic researchers recognize national standard setters (either in their role as maintaining a national GAAP next to IFRSs or as bodies charged with conveying the jurisdictional point of view to the IASB) as an important topic of country-level and comparative research. Users and preparers of financial statements have also organized themselves, sometimes by jurisdiction, but sometimes as regional or even global interest groups. CZ (2015, p. 139) note how the creation of the International Banking Federation received an important stimulus from concerns over a possible move by the IASB towards a full fair value standard for financial instru- ments. Many existing business organizations, from BUSINESSEUROPE to Japan's Keidanren, have developed working groups or platforms to consider IFRS issues. Since 2008, a Global Preparers Forum functions as a regular advisory Committee of the IASB, although it remains independently organized. It traces its origins to meetings of the IASB with European CFOs dating from 2003. Users of financial statements have organized themselves through the various national asso- ciations of financial analysts, and internationally, since 2005, in the Corporate Reporting Users Forum (CRUF), which interacts both with the IASB and the FASB. Several of the people active in setting up the CRUF were already meeting with the IASB on a more or less regular basis since 2003 as the Analyst Representative Group. This is currently known as the Capital Markets Advisory Committee, which, like the Global Preparers Forum, remains an independent grouping but is recognized by the IASB as one of its advisory Committees. The preceding review is not exhaustive. The significance of this network of organizations surrounding the IASB has up to a point been recognized in the research literature. But in our view the richness of the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. It may well be that, at the level of national standard setting, this is a less prominent issue in that constituents may tend to use established organizations such as employers federations, as well as informal networks of professional contacts, to interact with the standard setter. But at the international level, there are few established structures, and it is an open question on what basis - by jurisdiction or otherwise coalitions will form to interact with the IASB. 6. Approaches to Setting International Standards In this section we discuss two aspects of setting standards at an international level. First, we con- sider how the IASB has used the notion of convergence in its strategy for developing IFRSs. Second, we consider how the IASB has dealt with requests that its standards accommodate differences in national business conditions. 6.1. Convergence The notion of convergence' is directly related to the issue of jurisdictional constituents in that it presupposes the existence of national GAAPs existing alongside IFRSs, and that differences among the different sets of standards can be gradually reduced. The word convergence has been heavily used since the 1990s when discussing the IASC and the IASB, but it is not always noted that the IASB has used convergence in different senses (see, however, Pacter, 2005; Wagenhofer, 2014). CZ (2015, pp. 128-137) describe how the IASB 15Perry and Nolke (2005) is an important early example of such a network analysis, but, partly reflecting the specific circumstances of the IASB's early years, probably overemphasizes the significance of organizations and individuals from the financial sector. Richardson (2009), Botzem (2012) and Goedl (2012) are other examples. but focused more on the govemance network of the IASB than on the standard-setting level. The Challenge of Setting Standards for a Worldwide Constituency 305 initially thought of convergence as a multilateral process in which the IASB might take elements from different national GAAPs. However, convergence soon came to acquire the specific mean- ing of 'convergence with US GAAP', and it is this type of convergence which dominated the IASB's agenda between 2005 and 2011. CZ (2015, pp. 246-247) note that convergence was also used to describe the working relations between the IASB and the Accounting Standards Board of Japan, but that in this case the convergence was almost exclusively unidirectional, that is, a movement to converge Japanese standards with IFRSs. The same question has often been asked with respect to the IASB-FASB convergence effort: was convergence a one-way street by which the IASB adopted US GAAP? The detailed anal- ysis of the various convergence projects in CZ (2015) makes clear that convergence was a much more complex process than one board simply imposing its views on the other, and that the mean- ing of convergence varied greatly over time and from topic to topic. The point has also been discussed in Baudot (2014), an important study of the IASB-FASB convergence effort from 2002 to 2011, highlighting the changing nature of convergence'. CZ (2015) differs from Bau- dot's paper in that the former could devote more space to a discussion of individual projects and sought to bring out the specific historical circumstances of each project, rather than to cast the discussion in terms derived from a theoretical framework. Nonetheless, we concur with many of her observations. There were two standards, IFRS 8 on segment reporting and IFRS 13 on fair value measure- ment, where the IASB made no secret of the fact that it relied heavily on pre-existing US GAAP, and was strongly criticized for doing so. But these standards were unusual in that they were not intended to change either the recognition of any balance-sheet and income-statement items nor the measurement basis to be applied. In many cases where convergence would change the accounting, both boards discovered how difficult it often was to transplant elements of a standard from IFRSs to US GAAP or vice versa, without opening up a range of related issues. Although the boards tried their hand at many short-term convergence projects intended to remove small differences by quick fixes, few of these were successfully completed. In our experience, recon- structing the IASB's highly flexible agenda on this point is not easy, nor was it in all cases obvious that projects sailing under the flag of convergence were in fact convergence projects (CZ, 2015, pp. 129-131, 351-355, 569573).17 Gradually, the convergence effort shifted to a small number of major projects where the boards attempted to develop completely new standards simultaneously. We share Baudot's (2014) caution in passing general judgments on IASB-FASB convergence and support her call for further research on the IASB-FASB convergence experience, if only as an episode of singular historical importance. That it was an episode rather than a structural feature has become clear now that the major convergence projects (revenue recognition, finan- cial instruments, leases) have been completed. Even so, it is still early days for evaluating this convergence experience as a whole. With a view to the future, the challenge to the IASB and the FASB to maintain converged standards (such as on revenue recognition) on an ongoing basis is a novel phenomenon in financial reporting, and as such a new topic for research. We do note, though, that the two boards still work together, albeit at a much lower level of intensity, and cooperation by the IASB with national standard setters remains a topical sub- ject. More generally, there would seem to be an entire field of studies regarding jurisdictions' policies in maintaining, or not, a set of national accounting standards and the degree to which convergence with IFRSs is pursued. CZ (2015, pp. 390, 543) note, for instance, how France and Germany each in their own way reached the conclusion that they should maintain a set of national 16 See Van Hulle (2002) for an early expression of this concern. 17Scc Dick and Walton (2007) for a rare discussion, in the academic literature, of the evolution of the IASB's agenda. 306 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff requirements that may differ in principle from IFRSs. It seems a straightforward hypothesis that a jurisdiction's relations with the IASB will depend in important ways by the strength or absence of a commitment to mirror the evolution of IFRSs in national standards. 6.2. Accommodation to Countries' Business Customs and Laws A fundamental and unanswered question underlying the efforts of the IASC and the IASB is how an international standard setter should respond to claims that its standards, or proposed standards, do not properly account for local circumstances. The ways of doing business, as well as governing laws and regulatory cultures, inevitably vary across countries (see Zeff, 2007), so such claims would in general seem to be admissible. However, just as the IASB has been reluctant to set industry-specific standards, so it has been reluctant to adjust its agenda or its standards to country-specific issues. In a formal sense, such issues can be resolved by due process: one can assume that the onus is on jurisdictions to make their case, so that the Board can weigh the alternatives of a rela- tively simple standard that may be suboptimal in some countries or a more complex standard that allows for different accounting in a diversity of circumstances. For instance, in the course of the business combinations project included in the Board's initial agenda, Japanese constituents argued at length that true mergers of equals did occur in Japan, for which pooling of interests accounting was appropriate (CZ, 2015, p. 114). Although the Board decided otherwise, it was apparent that due process was followed. However, during most of the IASB's first decade there were no clear procedures for setting or modifying the Board's agenda or determining the scope of projects. The first broad-based, public agenda consultation was not held until 2011. Constituents who believed that an issue was relevant for their jurisdiction could send a letter or raise it infor- mally with the IASB. But the IASB could decide almost equally informally not to take the issue up. For instance, an important factor in the conflict between the Board and the European banking industry in 2003 and 2004 was that the banks asserted that the hedge accounting requirements of IAS 39 did not properly reflect certain characteristics of deposit-taking in Europe, whereas the IASB initially maintained that this issue was outside the limited scope, as drawn by the Board itself, of the revision of IAS 39. With the more elaborate procedures for agenda consultation now in place, it will become more feasible for researchers to consider in detail the way in which jurisdictions present their issues to the IASB, and the IASB's responses. As above, we counsel that such research should not be limited to an analysis of letters written in response to the agenda consultation With respect to the past, it is not so easy to assess with any degree of precision how responsive the IASB has been to requests from specific jurisdictions. In general, one could observe that, for most of its first decade, the Board was heavily preoccupied with the concerns of one jurisdiction in particular, the United States. How one views the strategic justification of the Board's focus on US GAAP convergence will influence how one evaluates the amount of attention the Board was able to devote to other jurisdictions. That it did at least devote some attention to jurisdictions other than the United States may be seen from the following enumeration of, in our view, the more conspicuous instances where the Board took note of jurisdictional concerns. As will be seen, most of the issues addressed could in principle be relevant across the world, but were felt with particular keenness in one or a few jurisdictions. In 2008, the Board modified IAS 32 Financial instruments: Presentation to allow by way of exception that some classes of ownership rights that could be sold back to the entity (puttable instruments") could be classified as equity rather than liabilities. This resolved the problem of certain cooperatives and partnerships, notably in New Zealand and Germany, whose equity might otherwise have been zero or highly volatile. Whereas the amendment came in time for New The Challenge of Setting Standards for a Worldwide Constituency 307 Zealand's transition to IFRSs in 2007, the IASB's perceived slowness to act in time for the European IFRS transition in 2005 created considerable resentment in Germany (CZ, 2015, p. 384). In 2009, the Board modified IAS 24 Related party disclosures to deal with China's prob- lem that the multiplicity of disclosures would be onerous for a country that is veritably run by state-owned enterprises (CZ, 2015, p. 238). In 2010, the Board again accommodated China by revising IFRS 1 First-time adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards to enable state-owned enterprises engaging in an initial public offering of their shares to revalue their fixed assets without the need, under IAS 16 Property, plant and equipment, to revalue these assets reg- ularly in the future. The amendment acknowledged that this initial upward valuation was deemed to be cost (CZ, 2015, p. 530). Again in 2009, the IASB, at the request of Japan, inserted a provision in IFRS 9 Finan- cial instruments allowing that gains and losses on 'strategic investments' (as in the case of cross-holdings making up keiretsu or similar networks of companies) could be taken to other comprehensive income instead of to profit or loss (CZ, 2015, p. 525). Hong Kong and New Zealand had for many years asked the IASB to clarify how to account for deferred taxation on investment property. According to their tax laws, the amount of tax payable, if any, depended on the recovery of the asset (through sale or held for rentals), but reporting entities often had no basis for predicting the expected mode of recovery in a possibly distant future as required by IAS 12). For as many years, the IASB suggested that it would address the issue in the context of a short-term US GAAP convergence project on income tax, which it had added to its agenda following the 2002 Norwalk Agreement. After a number of twists and turns, this project came to naught in the second half of 2009. The IASB finally settled the issue of Hong Kong and New Zealand by a small amendment to IAS 12 in 2010 (CZ, 2015, p. 606). At the request of Malaysia, the IASB decided in 2014 to partition biological assets into 'pro- duce' and 'bearer' so that, for example, the rubber from a rubber plant would be periodically revalued under IAS 41 Agriculture, while the plant itself would be treated as a fixed asset in line with IAS 16. In 2014, the Board issued IFRS 14 Regulatory deferral accounts, an interim standard, which allows public utility companies to make use of deferral accounts that do not qualify as assets and liabilities under the conceptual framework when such accounts have been authorized by regulatory authorities. The standard was tailored to the needs of Canada, whose public utilities had been allowed to postpone their transition to IFRSs in anticipation of such an accommodation (CZ, 2015, pp. 232-233). The IASB, s well as the IASC before it, has avoided drafting a standard specifically addressed to developing countries, despite persistent criticism that both Boards were insufficiently attuned to the needs of these countries. Instead, the IASC finally responded by producing IAS 41 Agri- culture (Camfferman & Zeff, 2007, pp. 401404). The IASB's IFRS for SMEs was not addressed to any kind of jurisdiction in particular, but that it would help to deal with the perceived unsuit- ability of full IFRSs for developing countries was an ever-present notion (see Ram, 2012, for a detailed study of the process leading up to IFRS for SMEs). In the course of time, one supposes that the Board will be asked to make the necessary amend- ments to its standards that they will not conflict with Shariah law in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and certain other countries. The subject is being discussed by the Board's recently cre- ated Consultative Group of Shariah-Compliant Instruments and Transactions (renamed in 2016 the Islamic Finance Consultative Group). Compared to lobbying by industry groups, it would seem that the research literature has paid rather less attention to the question of how jurisdictions have sought to persuade the IASB to deal with their specific issues, or how the Board has responded or failed to respond. There is a 308 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff fairly extensive academic literature documenting various forms of resistance to IFRSs, but little of it reflecting directly on the interaction between the IASB and specific jurisdictions. Some of this literature is concerned with the general tensions between IFRSs and the prevailing pre-IFRS financial reporting culture (e.g. Gelter & Kavame, 2014), and branching into the literature on the persistence of international differences following the adoption of IFRSs (Nobes, 2011; see also Ding, Hope, Jeanjean, & Stolowy, 2007; Raffournier, 2014). Some of the literature is concerned with resistance to change as such or with the redistribution of power and wealth because of such a change (e.g. Albu et al., 2011: Maroun & van Zijl, 2016), or with dissatisfaction with perceived deficiencies of IFRSs that are not necessarily specific to one or more jurisdictions (e.g. Carlin & Finch, 2010). Baker, Biondi, & Zhang (2010) do attempt to consider, in particular, the Chinese response to the abolition of pooling of interests, but provide little information on how, if at all, the Chinese position was brought to the attention of the IASB, or on the IASB's response to it. If a jurisdiction believes that the IASB has been insufficiently responsive to its concerns, a conceivable alternative is that it makes adjustments itself to IFRSs upon adoption. The notorious EU carve-outs applied to IAS 39 in 2004 are perhaps the best known example, giving rise to widespread expressions of anxiety that the objective of a single global standard might be jeopar- dized by the emergence of national or regional versions of IFRS (CZ, 2015, pp. 157-160). The extent to which such concerns are justified is not clear. While the EU has made no further carve- outs, CZ (2015, pp. 159, 254) note some examples of jurisdictions that made minor changes to standards or issued additional interpretations. More research may provide us with a more com- prehensive picture of such local variations, as well as better insight in the forces that produce them. 7. Concluding Remarks In our view, and as documented more fully in CZ (2015), it is striking how much the IASB has changed since it came into being in 2001. The change is quite comprehensive and encompasses the composition of the Board and its views on accounting standards, the relative roles of Board and staff, the governance and the funding of the IFRS Foundation, the role of convergence in particular with US GAAP) in standard setting, the elaborate due process and outreach proce- dures, and the currently much more sedate pace of standard setting, compared to the headlong rush to complete the convergence agenda prior to June 2011. In this paper, we have argued that a key to understanding these developments is the acceptance of IFRSs around the world to a degree that few people would have been willing to predict in 2000, thus creating the challenge of defining the relations between the IASB and its heterogeneous jurisdictional constituents. This is clearly not the only key make sense of the evolution of the IASB. It is likely, for instance, that the increasing elaboration of the IASB's standard-setting process also reflects rising expec- tations in many countries of greater transparency, accountability and consultation in regulatory processes, as well as the increasing possibilities for digital communication. In the future, another important key may be that the IASB and its constituents have begun to reflect seriously on the implications for corporate reporting and traditional accounting standard setting of developments in information technology and demands for integrated reporting, Yet the jurisdictional angle remains pervasive. While it is natural that, during the initial stages of the movement towards IFRSs, researchers focused on the IASB and its standards, we believe that research focusing on individual jurisdictions and their relations with the IASB should attract 18See for instance Request for views: Trustees' review of structure and effectiveness: Issues for the review (IFRS Foundation, July 2015), paragraphs 2339. 304 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff but reinforcing our suggestion in Section 4.2 we propose that academic researchers recognize national standard setters (either in their role as maintaining a national GAAP next to IFRSs or as bodies charged with conveying the jurisdictional point of view to the IASB) as an important topic of country-level and comparative research. Users and preparers of financial statements have also organized themselves, sometimes by jurisdiction, but sometimes as regional or even global interest groups. CZ (2015, p. 139) note how the creation of the International Banking Federation received an important stimulus from concerns over a possible move by the IASB towards a full fair value standard for financial instru- ments. Many existing business organizations, from BUSINESSEUROPE to Japan's Keidanren, have developed working groups or platforms to consider IFRS issues. Since 2008, a Global Preparers Forum functions as a regular advisory Committee of the IASB, although it remains independently organized. It traces its origins to meetings of the IASB with European CFOs dating from 2003. Users of financial statements have organized themselves through the various national asso- ciations of financial analysts, and internationally, since 2005, in the Corporate Reporting Users Forum (CRUF), which interacts both with the IASB and the FASB. Several of the people active in setting up the CRUF were already meeting with the IASB on a more or less regular basis since 2003 as the Analyst Representative Group. This is currently known as the Capital Markets Advisory Committee, which, like the Global Preparers Forum, remains an independent grouping but is recognized by the IASB as one of its advisory Committees. The preceding review is not exhaustive. The significance of this network of organizations surrounding the IASB has up to a point been recognized in the research literature. But in our view the richness of the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. It may well be that, at the level of national standard setting, this is a less prominent issue in that constituents may tend to use established organizations such as employers federations, as well as informal networks of professional contacts, to interact with the standard setter. But at the international level, there are few established structures, and it is an open question on what basis - by jurisdiction or otherwise coalitions will form to interact with the IASB. 6. Approaches to Setting International Standards In this section we discuss two aspects of setting standards at an international level. First, we con- sider how the IASB has used the notion of convergence in its strategy for developing IFRSs. Second, we consider how the IASB has dealt with requests that its standards accommodate differences in national business conditions. 6.1. Convergence The notion of convergence' is directly related to the issue of jurisdictional constituents in that it presupposes the existence of national GAAPs existing alongside IFRSs, and that differences among the different sets of standards can be gradually reduced. The word convergence has been heavily used since the 1990s when discussing the IASC and the IASB, but it is not always noted that the IASB has used convergence in different senses (see, however, Pacter, 2005; Wagenhofer, 2014). CZ (2015, pp. 128-137) describe how the IASB 15Perry and Nolke (2005) is an important early example of such a network analysis, but, partly reflecting the specific circumstances of the IASB's early years, probably overemphasizes the significance of organizations and individuals from the financial sector. Richardson (2009), Botzem (2012) and Goedl (2012) are other examples. but focused more on the govemance network of the IASB than on the standard-setting level. The Challenge of Setting Standards for a Worldwide Constituency 305 initially thought of convergence as a multilateral process in which the IASB might take elements from different national GAAPs. However, convergence soon came to acquire the specific mean- ing of 'convergence with US GAAP', and it is this type of convergence which dominated the IASB's agenda between 2005 and 2011. CZ (2015, pp. 246-247) note that convergence was also used to describe the working relations between the IASB and the Accounting Standards Board of Japan, but that in this case the convergence was almost exclusively unidirectional, that is, a movement to converge Japanese standards with IFRSs. The same question has often been asked with respect to the IASB-FASB convergence effort: was convergence a one-way street by which the IASB adopted US GAAP? The detailed anal- ysis of the various convergence projects in CZ (2015) makes clear that convergence was a much more complex process than one board simply imposing its views on the other, and that the mean- ing of convergence varied greatly over time and from topic to topic. The point has also been discussed in Baudot (2014), an important study of the IASB-FASB convergence effort from 2002 to 2011, highlighting the changing nature of convergence'. CZ (2015) differs from Bau- dot's paper in that the former could devote more space to a discussion of individual projects and sought to bring out the specific historical circumstances of each project, rather than to cast the discussion in terms derived from a theoretical framework. Nonetheless, we concur with many of her observations. There were two standards, IFRS 8 on segment reporting and IFRS 13 on fair value measure- ment, where the IASB made no secret of the fact that it relied heavily on pre-existing US GAAP, and was strongly criticized for doing so. But these standards were unusual in that they were not intended to change either the recognition of any balance-sheet and income-statement items nor the measurement basis to be applied. In many cases where convergence would change the accounting, both boards discovered how difficult it often was to transplant elements of a standard from IFRSs to US GAAP or vice versa, without opening up a range of related issues. Although the boards tried their hand at many short-term convergence projects intended to remove small differences by quick fixes, few of these were successfully completed. In our experience, recon- structing the IASB's highly flexible agenda on this point is not easy, nor was it in all cases obvious that projects sailing under the flag of convergence were in fact convergence projects (CZ, 2015, pp. 129-131, 351-355, 569573).17 Gradually, the convergence effort shifted to a small number of major projects where the boards attempted to develop completely new standards simultaneously. We share Baudot's (2014) caution in passing general judgments on IASB-FASB convergence and support her call for further research on the IASB-FASB convergence experience, if only as an episode of singular historical importance. That it was an episode rather than a structural feature has become clear now that the major convergence projects (revenue recognition, finan- cial instruments, leases) have been completed. Even so, it is still early days for evaluating this convergence experience as a whole. With a view to the future, the challenge to the IASB and the FASB to maintain converged standards (such as on revenue recognition) on an ongoing basis is a novel phenomenon in financial reporting, and as such a new topic for research. We do note, though, that the two boards still work together, albeit at a much lower level of intensity, and cooperation by the IASB with national standard setters remains a topical sub- ject. More generally, there would seem to be an entire field of studies regarding jurisdictions' policies in maintaining, or not, a set of national accounting standards and the degree to which convergence with IFRSs is pursued. CZ (2015, pp. 390, 543) note, for instance, how France and Germany each in their own way reached the conclusion that they should maintain a set of national 16 See Van Hulle (2002) for an early expression of this concern. 17Scc Dick and Walton (2007) for a rare discussion, in the academic literature, of the evolution of the IASB's agenda. 306 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff requirements that may differ in principle from IFRSs. It seems a straightforward hypothesis that a jurisdiction's relations with the IASB will depend in important ways by the strength or absence of a commitment to mirror the evolution of IFRSs in national standards. 6.2. Accommodation to Countries' Business Customs and Laws A fundamental and unanswered question underlying the efforts of the IASC and the IASB is how an international standard setter should respond to claims that its standards, or proposed standards, do not properly account for local circumstances. The ways of doing business, as well as governing laws and regulatory cultures, inevitably vary across countries (see Zeff, 2007), so such claims would in general seem to be admissible. However, just as the IASB has been reluctant to set industry-specific standards, so it has been reluctant to adjust its agenda or its standards to country-specific issues. In a formal sense, such issues can be resolved by due process: one can assume that the onus is on jurisdictions to make their case, so that the Board can weigh the alternatives of a rela- tively simple standard that may be suboptimal in some countries or a more complex standard that allows for different accounting in a diversity of circumstances. For instance, in the course of the business combinations project included in the Board's initial agenda, Japanese constituents argued at length that true mergers of equals did occur in Japan, for which pooling of interests accounting was appropriate (CZ, 2015, p. 114). Although the Board decided otherwise, it was apparent that due process was followed. However, during most of the IASB's first decade there were no clear procedures for setting or modifying the Board's agenda or determining the scope of projects. The first broad-based, public agenda consultation was not held until 2011. Constituents who believed that an issue was relevant for their jurisdiction could send a letter or raise it infor- mally with the IASB. But the IASB could decide almost equally informally not to take the issue up. For instance, an important factor in the conflict between the Board and the European banking industry in 2003 and 2004 was that the banks asserted that the hedge accounting requirements of IAS 39 did not properly reflect certain characteristics of deposit-taking in Europe, whereas the IASB initially maintained that this issue was outside the limited scope, as drawn by the Board itself, of the revision of IAS 39. With the more elaborate procedures for agenda consultation now in place, it will become more feasible for researchers to consider in detail the way in which jurisdictions present their issues to the IASB, and the IASB's responses. As above, we counsel that such research should not be limited to an analysis of letters written in response to the agenda consultation With respect to the past, it is not so easy to assess with any degree of precision how responsive the IASB has been to requests from specific jurisdictions. In general, one could observe that, for most of its first decade, the Board was heavily preoccupied with the concerns of one jurisdiction in particular, the United States. How one views the strategic justification of the Board's focus on US GAAP convergence will influence how one evaluates the amount of attention the Board was able to devote to other jurisdictions. That it did at least devote some attention to jurisdictions other than the United States may be seen from the following enumeration of, in our view, the more conspicuous instances where the Board took note of jurisdictional concerns. As will be seen, most of the issues addressed could in principle be relevant across the world, but were felt with particular keenness in one or a few jurisdictions. In 2008, the Board modified IAS 32 Financial instruments: Presentation to allow by way of exception that some classes of ownership rights that could be sold back to the entity (puttable instruments") could be classified as equity rather than liabilities. This resolved the problem of certain cooperatives and partnerships, notably in New Zealand and Germany, whose equity might otherwise have been zero or highly volatile. Whereas the amendment came in time for New The Challenge of Setting Standards for a Worldwide Constituency 307 Zealand's transition to IFRSs in 2007, the IASB's perceived slowness to act in time for the European IFRS transition in 2005 created considerable resentment in Germany (CZ, 2015, p. 384). In 2009, the Board modified IAS 24 Related party disclosures to deal with China's prob- lem that the multiplicity of disclosures would be onerous for a country that is veritably run by state-owned enterprises (CZ, 2015, p. 238). In 2010, the Board again accommodated China by revising IFRS 1 First-time adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards to enable state-owned enterprises engaging in an initial public offering of their shares to revalue their fixed assets without the need, under IAS 16 Property, plant and equipment, to revalue these assets reg- ularly in the future. The amendment acknowledged that this initial upward valuation was deemed to be cost (CZ, 2015, p. 530). Again in 2009, the IASB, at the request of Japan, inserted a provision in IFRS 9 Finan- cial instruments allowing that gains and losses on 'strategic investments' (as in the case of cross-holdings making up keiretsu or similar networks of companies) could be taken to other comprehensive income instead of to profit or loss (CZ, 2015, p. 525). Hong Kong and New Zealand had for many years asked the IASB to clarify how to account for deferred taxation on investment property. According to their tax laws, the amount of tax payable, if any, depended on the recovery of the asset (through sale or held for rentals), but reporting entities often had no basis for predicting the expected mode of recovery in a possibly distant future as required by IAS 12). For as many years, the IASB suggested that it would address the issue in the context of a short-term US GAAP convergence project on income tax, which it had added to its agenda following the 2002 Norwalk Agreement. After a number of twists and turns, this project came to naught in the second half of 2009. The IASB finally settled the issue of Hong Kong and New Zealand by a small amendment to IAS 12 in 2010 (CZ, 2015, p. 606). At the request of Malaysia, the IASB decided in 2014 to partition biological assets into 'pro- duce' and 'bearer' so that, for example, the rubber from a rubber plant would be periodically revalued under IAS 41 Agriculture, while the plant itself would be treated as a fixed asset in line with IAS 16. In 2014, the Board issued IFRS 14 Regulatory deferral accounts, an interim standard, which allows public utility companies to make use of deferral accounts that do not qualify as assets and liabilities under the conceptual framework when such accounts have been authorized by regulatory authorities. The standard was tailored to the needs of Canada, whose public utilities had been allowed to postpone their transition to IFRSs in anticipation of such an accommodation (CZ, 2015, pp. 232-233). The IASB, s well as the IASC before it, has avoided drafting a standard specifically addressed to developing countries, despite persistent criticism that both Boards were insufficiently attuned to the needs of these countries. Instead, the IASC finally responded by producing IAS 41 Agri- culture (Camfferman & Zeff, 2007, pp. 401404). The IASB's IFRS for SMEs was not addressed to any kind of jurisdiction in particular, but that it would help to deal with the perceived unsuit- ability of full IFRSs for developing countries was an ever-present notion (see Ram, 2012, for a detailed study of the process leading up to IFRS for SMEs). In the course of time, one supposes that the Board will be asked to make the necessary amend- ments to its standards that they will not conflict with Shariah law in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and certain other countries. The subject is being discussed by the Board's recently cre- ated Consultative Group of Shariah-Compliant Instruments and Transactions (renamed in 2016 the Islamic Finance Consultative Group). Compared to lobbying by industry groups, it would seem that the research literature has paid rather less attention to the question of how jurisdictions have sought to persuade the IASB to deal with their specific issues, or how the Board has responded or failed to respond. There is a 308 K. Camfferman and S.A. Zeff fairly extensive academic literature documenting various forms of resistance to IFRSs, but little of it reflecting directly on the interaction between the IASB and specific jurisdictions. Some of this literature is concerned with the general tensions between IFRSs and the prevailing pre-IFRS financial reporting culture (e.g. Gelter & Kavame, 2014), and branching into the literature on the persistence of international differences following the adoption of IFRSs (Nobes, 2011; see also Ding, Hope, Jeanjean, & Stolowy, 2007; Raffournier, 2014). Some of the literature is concerned with resistance to change as such or with the redistribution of power and wealth because of such a change (e.g. Albu et al., 2011: Maroun & van Zijl, 2016), or with dissatisfaction with perceived deficiencies of IFRSs that are not necessarily specific to one or more jurisdictions (e.g. Carlin & Finch, 2010). Baker, Biondi, & Zhang (2010) do attempt to consider, in particular, the Chinese response to the abolition of pooling of interests, but provide little information on how, if at all, the Chinese position was brought to the attention of the IASB, or on the IASB's response to it. If a jurisdiction believes that the IASB has been insufficiently responsive to its concerns, a conceivable alternative is that it makes adjustments itself to IFRSs upon adoption. The notorious EU carve-outs applied to IAS 39 in 2004 are perhaps the best known example, giving rise to widespread expressions of anxiety that the objective of a single global standard might be jeopar- dized by the emergence of national or regional versions of IFRS (CZ, 2015, pp. 157-160). The extent to which such concerns are justified is not clear. While the EU has made no further carve- outs, CZ (2015, pp. 159, 254) note some examples of jurisdictions that made minor changes to standards or issued additional interpretations. More research may provide us with a more com- prehensive picture of such local variations, as well as better insight in the forces that produce them. 7. Concluding Remarks In our view, and as documented more fully in CZ (2015), it is striking how much the IASB has changed since it came into being in 2001. The change is quite comprehensive and encompasses the composition of the Board and its views on accounting standards, the relative roles of Board and staff, the governance and the funding of the IFRS Foundation, the role of convergence in particular with US GAAP) in standard setting, the elaborate due process and outreach proce- dures, and the currently much more sedate pace of standard setting, compared to the headlong rush to complete the convergence agenda prior to June 2011. In this paper, we have argued that a key to understanding these developments is the acceptance of IFRSs around the world to a degree that few people would have been willing to predict in 2000, thus creating the challenge of defining the relations between the IASB and its heterogeneous jurisdictional constituents. This is clearly not the only key make sense of the evolution of the IASB. It is likely, for instance, that the increasing elaboration of the IASB's standard-setting process also reflects rising expec- tations in many countries of greater transparency, accountability and consultation in regulatory processes, as well as the increasing possibilities for digital communication. In the future, another important key may be that the IASB and its constituents have begun to reflect seriously on the implications for corporate reporting and traditional accounting standard setting of developments in information technology and demands for integrated reporting, Yet the jurisdictional angle remains pervasive. While it is natural that, during the initial stages of the movement towards IFRSs, researchers focused on the IASB and its standards, we believe that research focusing on individual jurisdictions and their relations with the IASB should attract 18See for instance Request for views: Trustees' review of structure and effectiveness: Issues for the review (IFRS Foundation, July 2015), paragraphs 2339