Aproposal being put out for comment today seeks to overhaul the FinancialAccounting Foundation, the body that determines who will set accounting rulesin the United States, and would enable the Financial Accounting Standards Boardto act faster while increasing the power of its chairman,Robert H. Herz, reports Floyd Norris of the New York Times.
Theproposals would reduce the FASB’s size from seven to five members, and would give the chairman the power to decide whetheror not to place issues on the board’s agenda, according to Norris’s column.
“Thechanges would provide greater focus, and improve the speed of decision making,” Robert Denham, the chairman of the foundation, the parent group of boththe FASB and the Government Accounting Standards Board, told the New York Times.
Denham told the times that the proposed revisions would additionally involve changes in how the foundation’s trustees are chosen, and would also strengthen it to provide more oversight to the two accounting boards it oversees.
What’s more, FASB under the proposal would have to comprise one member from each of four backgrounds, including investing, auditing, preparing financial statements for a company, and academic accounting.