Abu Dhabi Accountability Authority (Adaa), announced Wednesday its success in making Abu Dhabi the first location outside the US to host the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) examination.

The approval was granted during a meeting held between Adaa's delegation headed by Riyad Al Mubarak, Chairman, and David Costello, President and CEO of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (Nasba) and Ken Bishop, Senior Vice-President and COO of Nasba.

In 2008, Adaa initiated contact with the Illinois Board of Examiners proposing to host the CPA examination in Abu Dhabi which coincided with the review and research being conducted by the Committee of Internationalisation of the CPA Examination to identify potential international exam sites and setting the governing regulations and security policy for this process. Nasba had also declared in its 2009 Annual Report that expanding the CPA exam to other international countries is being reviewed with the consideration of two locations only, these were Japan and the UAE without any confirmations on the mentioned sites.

Recently the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Nasba and Prometric - the three organisations collaboratively offering the exam in the US - announced that they have reached an agreement on how to best administer the exam in 5 international locations confirming Japan and the UAE as well as three additional locations, being Lebanon, Bahrain and Kuwait.