A senior U.S. regulator was “optimistic” today about finding a framework for the world’s top economy to use global bookkeeping rules for investors to compare cross-border companies, Reuters reported.

“We are hopeful we can put forward a model,” James Kroeker, chief accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), told Reuters.

More than 100 countries, including Europe, use accounting rules from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and are waiting to see whether the United States, the world’s biggest capital market, with up to 12,000 listed companies, adopts them too.

Other heavyweights like Japan would likely follow suit.

Kroeker said the SEC had delayed its decision due to the more urgent and intensive  work of fleshing out an overhaul of Wall Street as called for in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Kroeker said he will make a proposal to SEC commissioners in “coming months” on how the United States could switch, which would spark changes in how the IASB deals with national bodies.

He downplayed the notion of smaller firms being able to opt out indefinitely if U.S. adoption went ahead.