NEW global accounting rules are becoming too complicated to be of practical use in most of the world, according to the leader of the British accountancy profession.

He blames American influence and US corporate governance laws for undermining the aims of international accounting standards.

Paul Druckman, president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, will give warning today that the ideal of workable universal accounting rules will fail and developing countries will be excluded unless high-cost regulation and needless detail are dropped from the new global rules.

In an attempt to head off a division in accounting, Mr Druckman says that regulators from wealthy economies and developing countries should meet to thrash out a basic set of underlying principles. These principles could be applied universally by smaller businesses and in developing countries, he says.

The International Accounting Standards Board has set out to devise universal rules based on basic principles.

But critics say that the board has been diverted from improving the rules by its greatest success — the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards across the European Union and Australia — and by a compromise deal to harmonise its standards with America’s more detailed and prescriptive regime.

Mr Druckman will issue his warning at an institute conference in Brussels this morning. He says: “Financial regulation designed for listed companies operating in advanced economies is unsuitable for the vast majority of other businesses.

“Standards of thousands of pages impose costs that inhibit growth. International standards cannot be the preserve of an exclusive club.”

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