FASB taps vice chair, former KPMG partner for next chair

Dive Brief:

• The Financial Accounting Standards Board appointed Hillary H. Salo as its next chair. She will succeed Richard Jones on July 1, 2027 and serve for a term that ends June 30, 2034, according to a Tuesday release. 
• Salo, a former KPMG audit partner, rejoined the U.S. accounting standards setter in 2020 to serve as technical director before joining the board in July 2024 to serve as vice chair. Earlier in her career, she served as a FASB postgraduate technical assistant. 
• Jones, a former Ernst & Young partner who began his seven-year term as the FASB’s eighth chair on July 1 of 2020, expressed his support for his successor. “I couldn’t be happier for the financial reporting community and Hillary on her appointment. Hillary is a highly respected leader whose experience, credibility, and sound judgment have earned the confidence of the financial reporting community,” Jones said in a statement in the release.  

Dive Insight:

Salo will be the second woman to chair the FASB since it was established in 1973, according to a spokesperson for the Financial Accounting Foundation, the Norwalk, Connecticut-based independent non-profit which oversees the board. The first was Leslie F. Seidman, who joined as a FASB board member in 2003 and served as chair from 2010 to 2013. 

For businesses, the incoming chair’s strong FASB roots signal regulatory continuity, according to Nick Araco Jr., CEO of the CFO Alliance, a networking group for finance leaders. He noted Salo has been “running” FASB's technical agenda and chairing the Emerging Issues Task Force for some time.

“She isn’t a surprise pick,” Araco told CFO Dive. “This is really…someone who's already been steering the agenda. For our CFO Alliance members, that predictability is worth more than people realize when you're trying to plan multi-year compliance work.”  

At the same time, he said he doesn’t view Salo’s Big Four background as a sign that GAAP will get any easier for companies’ financial report preparers. Salo was on board as it issued income statement expense rules that require companies to break out expenses in ways they’ve never had to before, Araco noted.

What he does expect is someone who will bring an awareness about cost to rule making, while also keeping new standards moving toward more investor-driven disclosures. But he’s hoping the board under Salo will be more accommodating to mid-market and private companies that don’t have big accounting departments to absorb new standard demands.

The leadership change comes as the FASB, an independent non-profit, has recently faced political pressure. It has been called on by the Trump administration to address new accounting rules for the emerging crypto market. And last year, the FASB faced pressure from lawmakers to rescind income tax disclosure rules that have drawn pushback from some businesses.

Its funding largely comes from accounting support fees paid by public companies. But a provision that was later removed from a federal spending bill initially threatened to prevent the Securities and Exchange Commission from reviewing or approving FASB’s budget if new requirements for the income tax disclosures rules issued in 2023 weren’t withdrawn, CFO Dive previously reported. 

FASB is insulated from political pressures through structures built over decades, including its own due process requirements, according to Brian Monsen, an assistant professor of accounting at The Ohio State University. Like Salo, he also served previously as a post-graduate technical assistant at the FASB.

Monsen said he could only speculate on how Salo would respond to political pressure. But he described her as an "institutionalist" who has never dissented from the issuance of a proposed or a final accounting standards update, noting that he doesn’t expect any “sharp breaks with the Jones-era FASB.”  

“Nothing in Salo's record suggests she'd revisit a finished standard under political pressure,” Monsen said in an email. “Given her record as a Board member, I would be surprised to see her make a change in the FASB's position in response to political pressure alone.” 

The FAF spokesperson said there was no salary information currently available regarding Salo’s future compensation. 

As chair in 2025 Jones’ compensation totaled just under $1.48 million, comprised of about $1.2 million in base compensation as well as such items as retirement and other deferred compensation, according to the Financial Accounting Foundation’s 2025 tax filing.

As vice chair last year, Salo earned nearly $1.26 million, including $1.06 million in base compensation, according to the filing.