Kroeker steps up to succeed Hewitt at SEC

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has named James Kroeker to succeed Conrad Hewitt as acting chief accountant.

Hewitt retired on January 5. Kroeker joined the SEC as deputy chief accountant in February 2007 and has since concentrated on improving the transparency of financial reporting - he was responsible for oversight of the SEC's advisory committee on improvements to financial reporting, and led an SEC project last year to investigate the effects of mark-to-market accounting. Before joining the SEC, Kroeker was a partner in the US national office of accountancy firm Deloitte & Touche.

In an interview with Risk published this month, Hewitt said Kroeker would spend much of his time on the effort to bring international financial reporting standards (IFRS) to the US. "The IFRS roadmap has been voted and exposed for public comment. It has a 90-day comment period from November 14, so after that the comments will come back to our staff. We expect a lot of comment letters on the IFRS proposed release, there's a lot in there, so that will be a big project for the whole year," he said.

He warned, however, that Kroeker and the rest of the SEC staff could instead find their time taken up with reacting to the current financial crisis. "There's such a huge focus on the financial and economic crisis right now that other things may not get attention as quickly as I would hope. There could be a delay on IFRS or anything else for that matter, until the financial markets turn around."