European, Australian and Russian companies must comply with the new InternationalFinancial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the accounting period starting on January1, 2005. But PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) says many firms in the oil, naturalgas and utilities sector are unlikely to be ready in time.

And the 2005 deadline is somewhat misleading. Companies will have to include2004 figures – and, under some jurisdictions, even 2003 figures – intheir 2005 reports. But Manfred Wiegand, global utilities