Record Details

Goodwill Impairment: A New Window For Earnings Management?

The Review of Regional Studies

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Field Value
 
Title Goodwill Impairment: A New Window For Earnings Management?
 
Creator Jahmani, Yousef
Dowling, William A.
Torres, Paul D.
 
Description The Financial Accounting Standards Board promulgated standard No. 142 in an attempt to improve the understandability of accounting information.  This new rule eliminated the practice of automatically amortizing goodwill.  No. 142 requires public companies to test goodwill for possible impairment at least annually.  An unintended consequence of this new standard is the opportunity for companies to use it in earnings management.  To test the possibility that the rule is being used for this purpose, a sample of companies was chosen, all of which had amounts of goodwill on their balance sheet during the 2003-2005 interval.  The results reveal that the number of companies experiencing losses or low rates of return on total assets who actually impaired goodwill was statistically insignificant during the period under consideration.  Thus, the results strongly suggest that companies are using No. 142 in an attempt to manage the volatility of earnings.  
 
Publisher Clute Institute
 
Date 2010-02-01
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://clutejournals.com/index.php/JBER/article/view/669
10.19030/jber.v8i2.669
 
Source Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER); Vol. 8 No. 2 (2010)
2157-8893
1542-4448
10.19030/jber.v8i2
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://clutejournals.com/index.php/JBER/article/view/669/655