Lax Compliance of Goodwill Impairment Accounting in the Early Year after IFRS Implementation

Abstract

After some decades of discussing in recognizing, measuring and reporting goodwill in the financial reports, Hong Kong finally has promulgated HKAS 36 - Impairment of Assets, for the convergence of IFRS including IAS 36. This is absolutely applicable to all transactions of business combinations beginning on or after 1^st January, 2005. The adoption of HKAS 36 has resulted in significant changes and more complexity in terms of techniques and in the nature of disclosures relating to goodwill and its impairment to the reporting first-time adopters. The traditional method by adopting “capitalize and amortize” has been replaced by impairment testing regime based on subjective assumptions. Therefore, it is more likely to have inconsistent compliance by the first-time adopters in their transition period under the new reporting approach. Thus, this study has the purpose of examining the compliance levels under a variety of provisions of HKAS 36. By using the data of annual reports of Hong Kong listed firms, first-time adopters, the research found the material levels of non-compliance and substantial changes in the quality of note-form disclosures bearing on impairment testing process. Further study on post transition period is identified and discussed.

Keywords: Goodwill, Impairment, Financial Reporting Standard, Hong Kong