Natasha Herman (BSIB '10) |
As part of her degree for the BS in International Business program, senior accounting concentrator Natasha Herman needed to find a co-op in her country of study, France. BNP Paribas, which numbers among the top ten global financial institutions, provided a perfect opportunity for a challenging and well-rounded experience.
She began work in the Corporate Accounting Policies department, where her job description included researching updates to IFRS, helping to answer questions from employees world-wide regarding the proper accounting treatment for new products under IFRS, and writing benchmark reports to compare the preparation of financial statements among European and American banks.
This provided a unique opportunity to compare what she had learned about US GAAP at Northeastern to the IFRS treatment of substantially identical financial instruments. As her understanding of the concepts progressed, she was able to analyze the quantitative effects that differences in the accounting standards produced, but became curious about what would happen to American firms as the FASB and IASB worked on their convergence project.
Writing a Position Paper
Her supervisor and Northeastern alum, Peter Philbrick, asked her to write a position paper on the impact of implementing IFRS for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the United States. This set of standards, which is like an abridged version of full IFRS, has been proposed as a possible alternative for private companies reporting in the United States, which they could choose instead of full IFRS when convergence occurs.
Her research exposed her to multiple related insights written by major accounting firms. She interviewed a professor at the University of South Africa who was teaching IFRS for SMEs in addition to full IFRS. She crafted a paper including effects such as reduced mobility of employees from private to public firms, as well as limited comparability among similarly sized companies whose main difference lies only in their status as public or private.
Natasha sent the finished product to leading accounting journals, state accounting boards, and members of the Blue Ribbon Panel, whose purpose is to determine the best set of standards for private companies. Shortly after arriving back in the United States, she received notification from The CPA Journal that it had selected her article for publication. While a precise date has yet to be scheduled, she is excited to add this tangible result of her international co-op experience to the intangible benefits she gained by learning about accounting under IFRS in a global banking and financial services firm. A draft copy of the article is available here .