Mugur Isărescu: International Financial Reporting Standards – international experience and implementation by the banking sector in Romania in 2012 Opening speech by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the IFRS conference “International experience and implementation by the Romanian banking sector in 2012”, Bucharest, 20 June 2011. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished audience, It is an honour to have the opportunity to open the proceedings of the Conference titled “International Financial Reporting Standards: International Experience and Implementation by the Banking Sector in Romania in 2012”. This is a topical and, at the same time, a hotly-debated issue that we are going to discuss together with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Economic and financial developments tending towards internationalisation of banking operations in the context of globalisation of financial markets have highlighted the importance of financial information provided by companies, especially in terms of assessing and presenting the results and risks attached to their activity. Moreover, in the aftermath of the past years’ financial crisis, stronger pressures for harmonising accounting rules worldwide as a basis for the published financial information have emerged. Under the circumstances, the National Bank of Romania, in its capacity as the regulatory and supervisory authority of the Romanian banking system has steadily sought to harmonise its rules and practices with the best practices in the field so as to increase transparency and ensure comparability of information across the entire banking sector.
Detailed rules on governance in banks and deliberations on transposing extensive rules on banks’ internal control systems into national law complicate or even prevent the desired level playing field of consistent supervision – they increase fragmentation. Moreover, European supervisory legislation provides more than 150 options to choose from, options which have so far been exercised along highly different lines at the national level. Some are justified by local features – in this respect, the principle is that similar things should be treated similarly and dissimilar things should be treated dissimilarly. Many of the options are based rather more on tradition, and are in conflict with the principle of “same business, same risk, same rules”. The smaller proportion of these options remains national in character. Competence for the majority of the options – for over 100 – has been vested in the SSM since 4 November 2014. The ECB, together with the national supervisory authorities, has now begun to arrange for their consistent application. This process and the resulting adaptations will not always be simple or convenient, but the benefits of the outcome should outweigh the cost of adaption – not just in terms of financial stability, but also through more balanced competition and lower transaction costs. In some respects, we are still at the beginning of the road, but I am confident that the SSM has put us are on the right path towards achieving these objectives. 5.