(Adds meeting outcome, IASB comments, Steinbrueck)
By Marcin Grajewski and Huw Jones
LUXEMBOURG/TEL AVIV, June 9 (Reuters) - A global accounting standard setter came under renewed pressure from EU finance ministers on Tuesday to speed up reform of its rules and ease the pressure of bank balance sheets despite regulatory concerns.
The International Accounting Standards Board, which sets accounting rules used in over 100 countries, including the 27-nation EU, did not appear to have given ground, however, leaving plans unchanged for a gradual easing of the terms on which banks must report losses in the value of their assets.
IASB chairman David Tweedie and Gerrit Zalm, head of the board's trustees, were quizzed by EU finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg, raising concerns among regulators that the independence of standards setters is being undermined.
"Finance ministers renewed pressure on the board, which faced some irritation from ministers today," an EU diplomat present at the meeting said. "There were calls from Germany, France and others for the board to speed things up."
Accounting standard setters have come under pressure during the credit crunch to relax a rule that forces banks to value impaired assets at depressed prices. This has sparked writedowns that have unnerved investors and put pressure on banks to find fresh capital at a time when credit is harder to come by.
The G20 meeting of leading industrialised and emerging market countries agreed in April that accounting rules should be amended to avoid amplifying economic cycles.
The IASB has agreed to revamp its IAS 39 fair value or mark-to-market rule in stages so that key parts come into force by the end of the year in time for 2009 annual company results.
This followed calls from EU finance ministers in April for rapid action to relax the fair value rule after the IASB's U.S. counterpart, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, responded to pressure from Congress by relaxing its fair value standard.
Tweedie rejected calls to simply cut and paste the U.S. changes into the board's rules to speed up reform.
"On many issues EU financial institutions would not want us to adopt the U.S. approach on impairment," Tweedie told ministers in remarks released to the media. "Even today, after the FASB change, the US banking association is already arguing that EU banks have a competitive advantage."
He reaffirmed that the first phase of the fair value rule revision would be completed in time for 2009 financial statements, signalling no change to the board's timetable.
German Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrueck, later told reporters:"IAS 39 will be reworked in the coming months in such a way that it will be reliable and will be in place for use by European banks for the 2009 results."
INDEPENDENCE CONCERNS
The clash between the board and finance ministers has sparked concerns among regulators that its independence is at risk as policymakers come under public pressure to act.
"We have to make sure that the regulators act in the general interest in an independent way," said Eddy Wymeersch, who is chairman of the Committee of European Securities Regulators and a senior regulatory official in Belgium.
"We have to make sure international jurisdictions are absolutely independent and that is not an easy task," Wymeersch said on the sidelines of a meeting in Tel Aviv of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).
"It's unbelievable how politicians have become accounting experts in the last couple of months," said Hans Hoogervorst, head of the Dutch financial markets authority, also in Tel Aviv.
The IASB's monitoring board, which includes IOSCO officials, said standard-setters are best able to produce high quality rules if they can exercise independent judgment and due process.
"We reiterate that the IASB's due process and transparency in financial reporting are critical to our continued support as the authorities charged in our jurisdictions with determining accounting standards for use in our capital markets," the monitoring board said just ahead of the EU meeting.
(Writing by Huw Jones in Tel Aviv; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
(For more from the IOSCO conference in Tel Aviv, click on [nL8366078])