By the logic of others, which I can’t explain, fuzzy lines in accounting standards have come to be exalted as “principles-based” and bright lines are disparaged as “rules-based.” One of my favorite examples (actually a pet peeve) of this phenomenon is…
"Breaking the Rules and Admitting It" is the title of Floyd Norris's column describing the accounting by Société Générale for the losses incurred by their rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel; the title is provocative enough, but it's still not adequate to…
The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the body that governs the FASB, has issued a press release announcing the results of its one meeting to consider the feedback on their proposals to change the way the FASB operates. To reiterate from…
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…
The Financial Accounting Foundation is the body that oversees the FASB and the GASB (Governmental Accounting Standards Board). A few months ago, this august group published a seven-page document with eleven specific recommendations: "Request for Comments on Proposed Changes to…
I just finished reading a brief, highly readable and interesting article by a Columbia Law School professor, John C. Coffee, Jr., entitled A Theory of Corporate Scandals: Why the U.S. and Europe Differ.* The purpose of this post is to…
As I feared in earlier posts (here, here and here), but naively hoped against, the Republican-dominated SEC has carried the water for Big Business and anti-regulation ideology by eliminating the IFRS-to-U.S. GAAP reconciliation requirement. Investor advocates and other thoughtful people…
Would you like your staff to learn more aboutSEC reporting? Click here for a sample in-house training agenda!Teri Lombardi Yohn, an associate professor at Indiana University, has provided Senate testimony on the SEC's proposal (Rel. No. 33-8818)to permit foreign private…
It should come as no great surprise to savvy analysts that far too many accounting standards were written to benefit someone else other than investors and analysts. FAS 144 on impairment of long-lived asset is yet another example, but perhaps…