Cox says SEC will this month finalise its rule on internactive data format for all public company financial reports.

Christopher Cox, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman, said in a speech to the American Institute of Certified Practicing Accountants (AICPA) national conference on current SEC and PCAOB developments yesterday, published on Mondovisione, the commission would later this month finalise its proposed rule on the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

He noted the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation and AICPA had been aggressively supporting XBRL to provide investors with all public company financial reports in interactive data format.

The rule would significantly advance the objective of having 30 different spoken languages soon embedded in XBRL data tags attached to public company financial statements, enabling investors read an International Fincancil Reporting Standards (IFRS) or US GAAP financial statements from any country in their own native language.

He stressed that, for IFRS to fulfill its promise 'to be a uniter of the world's capital markets and a powerful tool for investors everywhere', the standards had to be crafted in the interest of investors; the standard setting process must be transparent; and all of stakeholders themselves participate in the standard setting process.

'The only real question is not whether this is good for investors, but how quickly both the accounting standards and the process by which they are established and developed can be globally recognized as world-class,' he said.