My latest post was about general problems with asset “impairment” accounting — its absurdity, high cost and dubious information value. And I haven’t even begun to hone in on the wurst part: goodwill impairment. It is somewhat more challenging to think about recognition…
After having just written a post on HP’s massive write-off of goodwill, I am reluctant to keep on banging the drum of how bad goodwill accounting can be. But, I can’t resist following up on Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil’s coverage of yet another…
When you start with a bogus asset like goodwill (itself a misnomer), it's hard to find quality in the rules that govern its measurement. The root of the problem is that business combination accounting relies on a fantasy: that an…
GM's recent filing of its registration statement with the SEC represents the collision of two topics I have written about. First, the fortuitous arrival of $30.2 billion of "goodwill" on GM's balance sheet so soon after the company crammed a…
I have written about initial recognition of goodwill on numerous occasions. I suppose it might be less bothersome if goodwill had the good grace to sit and stay like a good dog on the balance sheet at its opening 'value';…
I have already reported stumbling upon a fascinating interview of Clarence Sampson, SEC Chief Accountant for more than a decade starting in the mid-1970s. Of his many tales of peculiar interactions with special interests, this one struck me right in…
In a recent post, I argued that goodwill arising from a business combination was just a random number; therefore, any attempt to measure impairment amounted to nothing more than a costly charade. By coincidence, I recently had an inquiry from…
In an earlier post, I described how SFAS 141R resulted in some incremental improvements to the accounting for business combinations. However, warts remain, and the purposes of this post is describe the ugliest and most painful of them all: the…
This post examines the onion skin, if you will, of the new business combination standards. I'm going to explain the differences between the so-called 'purchase' method of accounting and the new 'acquisition' method. As is my habit, let's begin with…