Scott Bruns and Kathleen Meriwether of Ernst & Young count down the top five compliance risks facing life sciences companies, including sales & marketing risks, the FCPA and IFRS, as well as supply-chain integrity and aggregate spend.
By Ken Marshall, Co-leader of Ernst & Young LLP’s IFRS Markets team in the United States.
If economics be the dismal science, then the global slump that began in 2007 makes it seem still more so. With America’s regulators preoccupied with managing the credit crisis and its companies facing the imperative to cut costs — including on projects that require a long-term commitment of resources, what once appeared almost certain momentum toward US adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has slowed.
At the same time, there seems near universal agreement that a single global set of accounting policies and financial reporting standards would benefit investors. International standards setters and regulators, including the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), its counterpart the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) all share the view that comparability between US and other countries’ accounting standards will increase transparency in the global marketplace and protect investors.
