I have generally considered the developments regarding accounting standards for private companies over the past couple of years to be distractions from my focus on public company financial reporting. But it has come to the point where I have to…
An excerpt from a WSJ blog: "Outgoing FASB Chairman Leslie Seidman has had plenty of time to tackle long-standing questions about whether accounting principles are more desirable than specific accounting rules, writes Emily Chasan. The debate over whether detailed rules…
Even if the average citizen might have shrugged with resignation over the Senate's abandonment of gun control legislation, surely she must be in awe of the power of the NRA to bend democratically-elected senators to its will. On a less-visible…
Continuing with my theme of the U.S. GAAP/IFRS convergence misinformation campaign being waged by the Journal of Accountancy, the latest and greatest example is an article from the February edition, "What have IASB and FASB Convergence Efforts Achieved?" that appeared…
Companies overpay to acquire other companies all the time; but Hewlett Packard Co. just might be the new record holder for getting fleeced. I don't have the exact amount, but let's say that the goodwill HP initially recorded from the…
Over the years, the notion of accounting for "substance over form" has been trumpeted in IFRS circles as the apotheosis of principles-based accounting. From a practical standpoint, something like it is absolutely necessary for filling in the large gaps in…
I read numerous news sources this week echoing the SEC's announcement that it finally has a case it thinks it can win against auditors stemming from the 2008 financial crisis. One journalist, Jon Weil of Bloomberg, takes it a step…
I will have a lot to say about the FASB's recent publication of its proposed revisions to the accounting for loans over the next few months. In particular, I'm going to vivisect the horrendous "basis for conclusions" section of Proposed…
We have been covering loan impairment for the past few weeks, and the FASB's proposals leave me with the feeling that we will be discussing it for a long time to come. Once the FASB shoves its post-WWI-Germany-derived "Current Expected…
In my previous post, I committed to providing a statement of my own accounting principles with newer readers of this blog in mind. I am also adding a few observations about what the process of standard setting has come to…