<p><em>Background:</em> The international accounting standard regarding goodwill gives opportunities to several accounting procedure choices, as goodwill is a complex, intangible asset. The valuation of goodwill affects equity/asset ratio and income statement, which gives that the stakeholders’ impression of the group’s financial statement is affected by the valuation of this asset. It has been pointed out that difficult economic times bring impairment loss to the fore. During financial crisis, equity/asset ratio may be significant as the economy of the groups is expected to be strained.</p><p><em>Purpose:</em> The purpose of this essay is to explain the appearance of the possible relationship between a group’s impairment loss for goodwill and their equity/asset ratio, during financial straits. Watts and Zimmerman’s debt/equity hypothesis serve as the starting point for our study. This hypothesis expresses, ceteris paribus, that the larger debt/equity ratio, the more likely it is to select accounting procedures that shift reported earnings from future periods to the current period. According to the hypothesis there should be a positive relationship between a group’s equity/asset ratio and their percentage share of goodwill impairment loss. A high equity/asset ratio would motivate a higher impairment loss for goodwill, as a lower equity/asset ratio would induce a lower impairment loss.</p><p><em>Method:</em> We decided to investigate all groups with the parent company listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm within the sectors financials and industrials. In financials, banks were excluded. The data was collected from annual reports of 2008 and was analyzed with the statistical analyzing methods correlation and regression.</p><p><em>Result/conclusion:</em> For those industrial groups which have had impairment loss for goodwill, the result is in accordance with Watts and Zimmerman’s hypothesis. A strong positive linear relationship could be found for those groups, but not for the sector as a whole. The equity/asset ratio therefore seems to not affect the decision of whether to lose impairment or not, but when the decision is made, the ratio of equity/asset seems to affect the size of the impairment loss. Within the financial sector, no relationship could be found – neither for the groups which have had impairment loss nor the sector as a whole.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:oru-9712 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Mårtensson, Sofia, Sjöström-Löf, Liv |
| Publisher | Örebro University, Swedish Business School at Örebro University, Örebro University, Swedish Business School at Örebro University |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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