LeaseAccelerator announced David Byrne has joined the company as its new Head of Australia and Southeast Asia. Byrne brings over 20 years of experience at leading financial technology companies implementing growth strategies across Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

In his role, Byrne will focus on expanding sales and operations throughout Australia and Southeast Asia by building a team of experts in lease accounting, real estate lease management and asset finance. Once established, customer account teams will help organizations seeking an IFRS 16 software solution that require extensive and complex lease accounting, reporting and compliance in 2019.

"The IFRS 16 lease accounting standard will be one of the biggest accounting changes in history with trillions of dollars of real estate and equipment lease assets moving onto corporate balance sheets over the coming years," said David Byrne, Head of Australia and Southeast Asia at LeaseAccelerator. "With just seven months remaining until the adoption date for most listed companies in Australia and government agencies, companies won't have time for complex, ERP-centric solutions with multi-year implementation timeframes. The market welcomes a SaaS alternative that accelerates time-to-compliance."

Prior to joining LeaseAccelerator, Byrne led the Australia sales team of Wolters Kluwer CCH where he achieved record results and won awards for innovation in selling accounting, tax and legal software and research solutions to enterprise accounts throughout Australia. Byrne began his career in public accounting before moving into consulting and software roles at companies such as CapGemini and PeopleSoft.

"David has extensive experience managing and selling for high tech companies with a rapid growth trajectory," said John Keenan, Chief Revenue Officer of LeaseAccelerator. "He will be a driving force in helping us to accelerate the adoption of this new cloud-based category of software, Enterprise Lease Accounting, with listed and private multi-national companies and government agencies throughout Australia and Southeast Asia."

Developed over a period of 10 years by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the new IFRS 16 lease accounting standard changes the way companies will report leases in their quarterly and annual financial statements. The IPSASB has proposed a similar new model for public sector organizations. Many real estate and equipment leases previously only disclosed in the footnotes of investor filings will now be capitalized on corporate balance sheets. The IASB estimates that over $3 trillion of assets and liabilities will transfer onto corporate balance sheets in the coming years. The implementation deadlines for the new standards start in 2019.