The chair of the Private Company Council (PCC)—the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s primary advisory group on private-company reporting—says the council should deliver a recommendation or other concrete outcome within 12 to 24 months on any topic it takes up—or drop it—aiming to speed how private-company issues reach FASB’s standard-setting agenda.
Jere Shawver, a recently retired Baker Tilly US executive and longtime public-accounting auditor who now leads the PCC, said he is trying to tighten the group’s agenda, increase outreach to lenders and other everyday users of private-company financial statements, and avoid drawn-out projects that don’t produce timely outcomes.
“One of the weaknesses that we’ve had… is we took too long to get to market with things,” Shawver told Thomson Reuters on January 13, 2026. “We have got to accomplish something within 12 to 24 months on a topic and if we can’t… it’s too hard for us to be thinking about it – it must not warrant a change.”
The PCC advises the FASB on whether private companies need accounting alternatives or exceptions to U.S. GAAP, and does not write standards itself. But its recommendations can influence the standard setter’s agenda, proposals and final rules, and—by design—help keep private-company concerns from being overshadowed by public-company reporting demands.
A “Customer” Mindset — and a Push for Interaction
Shawver described the FASB board as the PCC’s “customer,” noting that PCC ideas ultimately need FASB support to become standard-setting action. He also framed private-company reporting as a balancing act: keeping financial statements aligned with broader GAAP while making compliance more practical and cost-effective for smaller businesses.
“If we create a lot of different accounting standards that are varied among public, private, not-for-profits… we’re going to be out of sync [and] people won’t understand what financial reporting means,” he said, adding that the typical private-company user is often “a local banker,” not a Wall Street investor.
To close the gap between standard setting and how private companies actually use GAAP, Shawver said the PCC has prioritized outreach. In 2024, he said the group met with “a thousand people” through town halls, calls, one-on-ones and meetings with affiliated groups to hear from preparers, practitioners and financial statement users.
Shawver said banks can ask borrowers questions, but lending officers are not necessarily accounting experts—raising the stakes for clear, decision-useful financial statements.
Topics in Focus: Leases, Subjective Acceleration Clauses — and Debt
Shawver said the PCC selects its projects by reviewing a broad list of potential topics and narrowing them to a manageable set, reflecting the group’s limited meeting cadence and reliance on FASB staff support.
Among the issues the PCC is focusing on in the year ahead, he highlighted:
- Lease accounting, particularly challenges for smaller-company lessees;
- Subjective acceleration clauses in debt agreements, where he said practice varies on how such provisions are treated for accounting purposes; and
- Debt disclosures and debt accounting, which he said may be “ripe for re-evaluation.”
The themes, he said, are not about lowering the bar for private companies, but about making requirements fit the economics of transactions without imposing costs that don’t add meaningful decision-useful information.
Private companies sometimes argue they shouldn’t face the same disclosure load as public companies because they don’t do the same complex transactions, Shawver said—but he warned the counterpoint is also true.
“Private companies are also entering into very complex transactions and unfortunately they don’t always understand them,” he said. “We’ve got to be careful we don’t take away their responsibilities to give their users relevant information just because it’s ‘hard.'”
“Speed to Market” — and Learning From Missteps
Shawver tied his timeline goal to execution. He said four topics added to the PCC’s agenda in June 2024 were moved “to market” and sent “out… to the FASB by March of 2025,” a roughly nine-month turnaround he contrasted with what he viewed as slower progress in earlier periods.
“If we can’t get things up and down, we’re wasting time,” he said.
He also said that the PCC must be willing to change course when feedback shows an idea won’t work. He pointed to its shelved construction retainage project under revenue recognition: after researching how contractors account for customer-withheld amounts, the PCC dropped an early approach that additional research and outreach showed wouldn’t fix the issue and could create new complications, ultimately issuing an educational paper instead of a standard-setting recommendation.
“You learn something by failing too,” he said, adding that in that instance the group “moved too fast” and needed more outside input.
Asked about FASB board turnover and whether the PCC has a limited window to influence the current board, Shawver said he is not planning around personnel changes.
“I don’t think about the board turnover… there’s nothing I can do about that,” he said. Instead, he said he is focused on keeping the PCC agenda robust and grounded in feedback.
Responding to Criticism That PCC “Slowed Down”
Shawver also addressed a recurring criticism that the PCC came out strong after its launch but later lost momentum.
He said major accounting projects such as leases, revenue recognition and credit losses consumed attention across the profession, making it easier in hindsight to argue the PCC should have pursued more.
“Leases… revenue recognition… credit losses… those soaked up all the energy anybody had,” he said. “But that’s over.”
His response, he said, is to make the PCC more visible and more connected to its constituencies—meeting with practitioner groups, bankers and sureties, and increasing presence in state society publications to prompt direct engagement.
As part of that visibility push, the PCC issued its first annual report in March 2025, aiming to give stakeholders a clearer view of its outreach, agenda and progress for the year prior.
When stakeholders say they feel unheard, Shawver suggested the issue is sometimes disagreement with outcomes rather than a lack of process. Still, he said, the PCC needs to ensure it is clearly listening and creating opportunities for feedback.
Tariffs and Taxes: Not a Core PCC Driver, he Says
On newer business issues like tariffs and tax concerns, Shawver said income taxes often aren’t a financial reporting issue for many private companies because many are pass-through entities, and he characterized tariffs as generally short-term and income-statement oriented.
He also argued that complexity is sometimes unavoidable when companies choose complex transactions.
“If you enter into a complicated transaction, you’re going to have complicated accounting,” he said.
Strengthening the Process
Shawver said one of his longer-term goals is institutional: building a repeatable PCC process that does not depend on a chair having unusual time availability.
He noted that he is retired, which gives him flexibility, and said he wants the PCC to have a methodology—run with FASB staff support and understood by PCC members—that can operate without a chair needing to be constantly “out in front.”
Shawver noted that the PCC’s annual report was part of an effort to make the council’s work easier to see—and easier to hold accountable. “The only worse marketer in the world than a regular accountant is a technical accountant,” he said, adding that prior PCCs didn’t always treat communication as part of the job: “With all customers, you need to remind them when you did a good job… that we did things for you.”
