A Departing Top Accounting Regulator Talks Star Trek, GAAP

Charles Niemeier is the first to admit some of the issues facing one of the nation’s top accounting regulators are fairly “nerdy.”

In fact, Niemeier likens the debate over whether the U.S. should jettison the current GAAP standards in favor of International Financial Reporting Standards to a “Star Trek groupie thing. There is a whole world of people that are really into it.”

As there should be. Adopting international accounting standards, which tend to be more lax than GAAP, could alter the transparency and rigorous reporting requirements of U.S. publicly traded companies, says Niemeier, who previously served as chief accountant in the enforcement division of the Securities & Exchange Commission and was involved in the investigations of Enron and Worldcom.

Deal Journal spoke with Niemeier, who is 52 years old, shortly after it was announced Wednesday that he was stepping down as a board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an agency he helped found seven years ago in the wake of the big accounting scandals. Here are some excerpts of the interview:

Deal Journal: What is your opinion of whether the U.S. should adopt the International Reporting Standards?

Niemeier: Ideally we should have the same standards that are used around the world, but I did not want to move to a single set of standards that are not of highest quality simply for sake of uniformity. My worry is that we were going to put aside concerns of quality for expediency. That’s why I’ve spoken out on this issue.

DJ: Who has been arguing against GAAP?

Niemeier: A few years ago, there have been business-sponsored and political commissions that have been looking at the competitiveness of US markets and saying they weren’t competitive because of overregulation. Now the drumbeat that we are over-regulated has stopped. But one of the remnants of that movement is that people have continued to push for international reporting standards

DJ: We’ve heard you were in line to become the SEC’s chief accountant.

Niemeier: At one point I was under consideration and last week the SEC appointed its acting chief accountant to that position.

DJ: Do you have any hobbies that you can now pursue?

Niemeier: I like to read biographies….I was reading a biography of Vanderbilt. It covers the time period before, during and after the civil war. Today we think all these shenanigans are kind of new inventions, but Wall Street was far worse before the SEC was created. It was just incredible the schemes that were going on.

DJ: Why are you leaving the board?

Niemeier: The original date for my term to end was last year. I’ve continued to serve for the 10 months beyond that. It’s simply time to move on. I have stayed focused on the best job I could do here. I haven’t spent anytime on what is next.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/09/02/a-top-accounting-regulator-talks-star-trek-gaap/