Called to account

Stop the presses: accountancy is news. It's official. Rarely has the financial press paid much attention to accounting issues, but over recent months significant progress has been made towards that holy grail of financial reporting: a set of globally-accepted accounting standards. The decision of Iosco, the club of stock market regulators, to recommend that its members accept 30 core principles drawn up by the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) was heralded by superlatives