IFRS is Back! Interpretations, Implementation, & Adoption Explained

Kathryn Ingram, C.A., M.Acc., BA, is Director of Professional Standards at MSCM LLP, an accounting firm providing assurance, business advisory and IFRS conversion services to public and private companies. Kathryn has over seventeen years of experience ensuring adherence to professional standards, managing education programs and delivering assurance and business advisory services. As Director of Professional Standards, Kathryn provides consultation on complex accounting issues, including the firm's IFRS engagements. She also develops and presents technical accounting and auditing training, performs quality control reviews of financial statements, and establishes and monitors quality standards for the firm. Before joining MSCM in 2007, Kathryn was part of Ernst & Young's Quality and Risk Management team and also spent four years at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. Prior to that, Kathryn provided assurance services to clients for over nine years with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where she was also involved in internal technology and education projects. Kathryn became a Chartered Accountant in 1997 and received her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) and Master of Accounting degrees from the University of Waterloo.

Donna Norman currently serves as Counsel to the Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In this capacity, she is a senior legal and policy advisor in the Division, and performs a wide range of senior management functions for the Director. 

Prior to joining the Commission, Donna was a litigator in private practice with Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC and with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Prior to entering private practice Donna clerked for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Donna is a member of the California and District of Columbia Bar Associations and an adjunct professor in the Securities LLM program at Georgetown University Law Center, where she teaches Regulation of Financial Institutions and Securities Markets.

Maciej Piechocki is XBRL Technology Project Manager at the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF). He is responsible for the technological development of the IFRS Taxonomy and other global IFRS and XBRL initiatives such as the Interoperable Taxonomy Architecture (ITA) project. Maciej is also involved in formulating the IASCF’s global outreach strategy to promote understanding and adoption of XBRL, encourage convergence and co-operation, and to establish best practice. Recently Maciej has been appointed to the XBRL Standards Board. 

Before joining the IASCF, Maciej was Head of the Competence Centre Information Logistics (Chair of Information Systems) at the Freiberg University of Technology. He was responsible for the centre’s business plan and strategic orientations, and led a team conducting projects in data warehousing, information logistics and ontologies. Maciej has also acted as an advisor on a number XBRL projects for the National Bank of Austria, the Polish Stock Exchange, and other commercial banks and software vendors. 

Maciej holds a PhD in Economics (dr. rer. pol.) with a major in Management Information Systems. His doctoral dissertation on “XBRL Financial Reporting Supply Chain Architecture” was recognised by the American Accounting Association with a Strategic Emerging Technologies Outstanding Dissertation Award. Maciej also holds an MSc in Management and Marketing from the University of Economics in Poznan, Poland where he majored in Investment and Corporate Financial Strategy, as well as an MSc in Business Administration from the Freiberg University of Technology, Germany with majors in Information Technologies and Information Systems, Accounting and Corporate Governance. 

Maciej is the author of the insolvency prediction model commonly used by auditors in Poland for analysing financial statements and ratios, and has also authored and edited books - “XBRL for Interactive Data: Engineering the Information Value Chain” and “New Dimensions of Business Reporting & XBRL”. Maciej was an initiator of the Polish XBRL jurisdiction and the founding member of the XBRL Poland Association.

Bob Laux is the Senior Director of Technical Accounting and Reporting at Microsoft Corporation. Mr. Laux is responsible for Microsoft’s technical accounting, including interacting with and responding to accounting standard setters on numerous issues. Technical accounting responsibilities include responding to GAAP questions and issues within Microsoft. He is also responsible for Microsoft’s comment letters on new accounting pronouncements and representing Microsoft at standard setters’ public roundtables. 

Prior to joining Microsoft in 2000, Bob was an Industry Fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) where he was responsible for coordinating the activities of the Emerging Issues Task Force. Prior to joining the FASB, Bob spent eight years at General Motors managing their external financial reporting and interacting with and responding to accounting standard setters. 

Accounting Related Activities 
Member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Board of Directors 
Member of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Global Preparers Forum 
Member of the AICPA’s SEC Regulations Committee 
Vice President, Practice of the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA). Member of AAA’s International Accounting Section. 
Member of the BNA Tax Management Accounting Advisory Board 
Member of the University of California-Berkeley Center for Financial Reporting & Management Advisory Board 
Alternate Member of the Committee on Corporate Reporting (CCR) of Financial Executives International 
Member of the AICPA’s Accounting Standards Executive Committee (AcSEC), 2001-2004 
Member of the AICPA’s Special Committee on Enhanced Business Reporting, 2003-2005 

Education 
BA – Accounting, Michigan State University 
MBA – Finance, University of Houston 
Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Management Accountant.

A partner in the Litigation Department, Walter G. Ricciardi focuses his practice on securities litigation and white-collar and regulatory defense. 

Mr. Ricciardi joined Paul, Weiss from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he had been the deputy director of the Division of Enforcement since October 2005. In that capacity, he was a leader in planning and directing the Commission's investigations and other enforcement efforts, and handled many of the Commission’s highest profile investigations and proceedings. From April 2004 to April 2006, Mr. Ricciardi also served as the district administrator of the Boston office of the SEC, where he led the Commission’s enforcement and regulatory programs in the New England region. 

Prior to joining the SEC, Mr. Ricciardi spent 20 years with Coopers & Lybrand and its successor, PricewaterhouseCoopers. He rose to become Coopers & Lybrand’s deputy general counsel, and following the merger was appointed leader of the Litigation Practice Group for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Throughout his career at Coopers & Lybrand and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr. Ricciardi was responsible for representing the firm and its personnel in connection with securities litigation, SEC and other governmental investigations and proceedings. While at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr. Ricciardi was elected by the firm's partners and served as a member of the firm's Board, which is responsible for overseeing the management of the firm. He was also elected to and served on the Global Oversight Board of the global organization of the PricewaterhouseCoopers firms. 

Mr. Ricciardi received his A.B. from Columbia College in 1975 and his J.D., cum laude, from the New York University School of Law in 1978, where he served as the note and comment editor of the New York University Law Review. Upon completing law school, Mr. Ricciardi clerked from 1978 to 1980 for the Honorable Charles R. Richey of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

John is a partner in the National Professional Standards Group of Grant Thornton LLP in the Chicago. John has 27 years of experience, including several years working overseas with IFRS in Europe, Asia, and Africa, providing advice on accounting and auditing policy matters and professional regulation including curriculum and continuing education design. A former project manager at the FASB, John participated in the FASB codification project by mapping the leasing literature, inventory, cost of sales, airlines, health care, and property, plant, and equipment. John is a CPA (Illinois), a CMA, and has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison.