In 2010, Brazil completed the convergence towards the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). As the politics of this process has been little explored, in this paper we draw on the Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and habitus to investigate how the field of accounting regulation was re-constituted during the adoption of the IFRS in Brazil. Through discursive analyses of several archival data, including parliamentary proceedings and documents issued by institutional agents, we investigate the reconstitution of this field from the early-2000s on, when discussions about the creation of a private standard-setter began. Our investigation indicates that the efforts to approve the legislative reforms necessary for the adoption of the IFRS were characterised by a high level of discursive homogeneity: it was claimed that such an adoption would enhance the transparency, comprehensibility, comparability and reliability of the financial reports of Brazilian firms, attracting foreign investments and promoting the economic development of the country. However, none of these claims was supported by substantive empirical evidences. Initially, the Federal Council of Accounting (Conselho Federal de Contabilidade – CFC) opposed the creation of a private standard-setter, claiming that it would undermine the self-regulation of the accountancy profession. In October 2005, though, the CFC itself created the Committee of Accounting Pronouncements (Comite de Pronunciamentos Contabeis – CPC), apparently solving the conflict that had structured the field until then. The influence of taxation on Brazilian accounting practices played a pivotal role in this process, as a common adversary that justified the alliance between the CFC and the capital market pole. As the CPC frames itself as only a translator and interpreter of the IFRS, the field as a whole is not a space of power anymore, given that substantive decisions in the standard-setting process are not made in Brazil. Nevertheless, some regulators still challenge CPC’s hegemony, requiring firms under their jurisdictions to prepare and disclose alternative sets of accounts. Contributing for a deeper understanding about the role of local agents in the adoption of the IFRS, we suggest that in Brazil this process was conducted by an interpretative community constituted some decades ago, whose agents exchanged the symbolic capital they previously possessed for the economic capital they earned through the expansion of the market for accounting services.