New FASB chairman Leslie Seidman hits the ground running.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Financial reporting - Financial Accounting Standards Board - Leslie F. Seidman - Interview

Leslie F. Seidman--who was named chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board Dec. 23 of last year, having served as acting chairman since Oct. 30--spoke in January with Financial Executive's Editor-in-Chief Ellen M. Heffes about her early priorities in her new role.

What are your first priorities as FASB chairman?

Seidman: My first priority is to integrate the new employees here at FASB--the new technical director, Susan Cosper, and the two new board members, Darryl Buck and R. Harold Schroeder--and make sure they have as smooth a transition as possible. Our organization has that type of change built into the structure, so bringing in new people is a matter of normal course.

They're joining at a good time because we had a number of projects out for comment, for which the comment periods have recently closed. The staff is analyzing the comment letters and other forms of feedback that we've received.

Usually the first step on a project is to prepare a summary of all of the comment letters and a project plan for how we want to move forward, so the new folks will join in time to hear the nature of the commentary and start the discussions with us.

My other top priority is to continue moving forward on our convergence program with the IASB [International Accounting Standards Board]. We recently reprioritized our agenda to identify a handful of projects as our highest priority projects. Those are: Accounting for Financial Instruments, Revenue Recognition and Leasing, and in the very near term, we plan to complete Definition of Fair Value and the Statement of Other Comprehensive Income.

My priority will be to continue to work through those projects, to evaluate and consider the comments that we've received as efficiently as we can over the next several months.

Talk about some of the feedback from comment letters and any pushback from constituents to the proposals.

Seidman: I don't think of this as pushback--I think of it as a vital part of our open due process. We've been receiving record numbers of comment letters on all of these high-priority projects. On accounting for financial instruments, one of our "more controversial" projects, we received more than 1,000 comment letters, so you can imagine that there are a lot of diverse views.

In terms of the specific issues raised, constituents agreed with some areas of the proposal --the accounting for trading instruments and also the need to develop improved guidance on impairment of debt...