Market Reaction to Goodwill Impairments
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines the information content of goodwill write-downs under International Accounting Standard (IAS) 36 (Impairment of Assets) and Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 142. We investigate whether the informational value depends on the reliability of the news. Using a sample of 564 goodwill write-down announcements issued from 2005 to 2009, we find a negative capital market reaction to announcements of unexpected goodwill write-offs. Our results indicate that investors react more negatively when a country's level of legal protection is low and allows more management discretion. We further report that market reaction is associated with managers explaining the write-down decision and depends on the verifiability of these explanations. Investors react more negatively when an unverifiable internal explanation is given and less negatively when a verifiable external explanation is provided. We do not find significant differences between write-down announcements under SFAS 142 and IAS 36.
Source: European Accounting Review
Authors: Thorsten Knauer, Arnt Wöhrmann
Institutions: University of Bayreuth, University of Münster
Language: English
Subfield: Accounting
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
OpenAlex ID: W3125380228