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The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on Friday concluded its first International Auditor Regulatory Institute.

Representatives from auditor regulators and government agencies from more than 40 countries convened on Wed., May 2, in Washington, D.C., to learn more about the PCAOB’s programs and how it carries out its mandate under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

The institute took place over two and a half days, with one full day devoted to discussions about the PCAOB’s inspections program. The institute also covered other activities of the PCAOB, including standard-setting, the enforcement process and international cooperation.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act directs the PCAOB to oversee and periodically inspect all accounting firms that regularly audit U.S. public companies. More than 780 audit firms currently registered with the PCAOB are located outside of the United States, spanning 80 countries.

SmartPros: PCAOB Concludes First International Auditor Regulatory Institute

The U.S. and Europe should be able to achieve a single accounting standard by 2009, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Committee, Christopher Cox, said Sunday.

Cox was appearing on a panel at the German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum. In other comments, he said the SEC was proving able to modify the U.S.’s Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to meet European concerns and that he expected the accounting progress to become a key part of a new transatlantic partnership on eliminating regulatory divergences.

U.S. President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are due to sign a new regulatory partnership Monday in Washington. The deal will create a transatlantic council to set priorities. Accounting standards are a “wonderful example,” a “tangible result” of what the new accord can achieve, Cox said. Progress towards common accounting standards is “going swimmingly,” he added. Specifically, he said the SEC was already willing to allow foreign issuers of securities to report results either in the IFRS international standards or the U.S. GAAP standards. It soon will consider whether allowing U.S. issuers to have a similar choice, he added.

European and U.S. regulators are working together well, Cox continued. He noted how they had managed to avoid a “calamity” when the New York Stock Exchange took over Euronext. He also noted how the SEC had managed to be “attentive to European concerns” about Section 404 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which required strict internal audits of corporate accounts.

MarketWatch: SEC’s Cox sees common accounting standards by 2009