When Financial Reporting Council boss Paul Boyle suggested earlier this year that a ‘rethink’ on convergence between IFRS and US GAAP might be in order, standard setters on both sides of the Atlantic couldn’t have been very happy.

Converging US GAAP and IFRS has always held the promise of broadening and deepening global capital markets. But it is a difficult goal to reach and any opposition from an important regulator could have been a major obstacle.

At the time Boyle was catalysed by the intense unhappiness over a segmental reporting standard which was adopted verbatim from the US, and kicked up a stink among UK NGOs and investor groups.

There will be much relief, then, at the US Financial Accounting Standards Board ­ and international counterpart the IASB ­ that whatever doubts Boyle may have had earlier this year have been quelled.

Last week the FRC reasserted its original stance of backing convergence, by writing a letter in support of the US Securities and Exchange Commission who earlier proposed to eliminate the US GAAP-IFRS reconciliation requirement for non-US companies using IFRS.

In the document the FRC outlined that convergence would provide significant cost savings for non-US issuers. The UK regulator also made clear that it sees IFRS, as issued by the IASB, as a ‘high quality set of accounting standards which is capable of ensuring adequate disclosure for the protection of investors ad the promotion of fair, orderly and efficient markets’.

It is a far cry from concerns the FRC had just a few months ago, when Boyle said the benefits of one accounting language might not outweigh the costs of time and money invested when there were other pressing issues to focus on, such as improving existing standards.

He also suggested that the relationship between the FASB and IASB may have become a little too cosy.

Those fears now seem to have been placed firmly in the past. The convergence bandwagon keeps rolling on.