On 1 January 2005, IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)was mandatory for all listed companies within the European Union. The introduction is to create a transparent and consistent reporting. Mainly to provide companies, investors and financiers the same access to world capital markets. Since the introduction of IFRS, the goodwill value is determined by annual impairment tests. If an impairment of goodwill is a fact the goodwill decreases in value.

Since January 1 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the EU are required to present their consolidated accounts in conformity with IFRS. Among many other consequences goodwill will no longer be amortized over its useful life but instead annually tested for impairments in accordance with IFRS 3. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the impairment test of goodwill as outlined in IAS 36 and analyze its implications. We conclude that the impairment test will probably lead to the recognition of internally generated goodwill in the consolidated accounts. We also conclude that the impairment test on highly aggregated levels will probably hasten the pace of this recognition since internally generated goodwill is used to shield acquired goodwill from impairments.

Since January 2005 new rules have been introduced from the International Financial Reporting Standards for accounting of Business Combinations. Goodwill, which is the difference between the purchase price and the value of the net assets in an acquired firm, should no longer be amortized but should instead be treated as an object for yearly impairment tests. Nevertheless, there are many companies making the tests but not impairing goodwill. The theoretical frame of reference looks at goodwill from its two parts; true goodwill and false goodwill. False goodwill is defined as a measurement bias and constitutes a certain percentage of the operating net assets.

Abstract Title:                               Goodwill ? differences and similarities between how IFRS and U.S. GAAP treats goodwill Level:                              One year master, 15 credits Author:                           Oscar Larsen and Thomas Karlsson Supervisor:                     Leif Carlsson Examiner:                      Cecilia Lindh Year of publication:      2011 The main issue:              What are the differences and similarities of the treatment of goodwill between the U.S. GAAP and IFRS? What can the transition from U.S.

Abstract: Since the recession caught the market in fall 2008, multiple companies have suffered due to their former aggressive investment behavior. Huge goodwill piles have been collected ready to be doomed by the market. The aim of the study is to investigate equity analysts? consideration of goodwill in a recession market. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with ten Swedish equity analysts that follow companies with relevant goodwill status.

On 1 January 2005, IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)was mandatory for all listed companies within the European Union. The introduction is to create a transparent and consistent reporting. Mainly to provide companies, investors and financiers the same access to world capital markets. Since the introduction of IFRS, the goodwill value is determined by annual impairment tests. If an impairment of goodwill is a fact the goodwill decreases in value.

Following the implementation of IFRS with yearly impairment tests, the question of correlations and causalities between impairments and investors? decision making is gaining interest in academia. This essay will study the relationship between significant Goodwill impairments, communicated on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm webpage between the years 2005-2009, and the impact those announcements have had on investors? decision making. Furthermore, the causality behind the impairments will be in focus.

The purpose with this final assignment is to find out how the old and the new regulations about Goodwill affect the Swedish companies, how their results and value of Goodwill changed since the regulation from IFRS took place. We will attempt to find out if the companies are better of with a yearly write-off or an impairment test every year to see if a write-down is necessary..

Bakgrund: Efter införandet av IFRS har det förekommit en del förändringar gentemot tidigare redovisnings regler i Sverige. Från och med 1 januari år 2005 skall alla börsbolag gå över till IFRS 3 Business Combinations. Detta innebär att goodwill inte får skrivas av så som det gjorts tidigare. Nu mer måste det årligen ske ett Impairment test av goodwill för att undersöka om det föreligger ett nedskrivningsbehov.Diskonteringsräntan används vid impairment test av goodwill och är en viktig faktor vid nuvärdesberäkningar av kassaflöden.Problem: Noterade börsbolag utför ett impairment test av goodwill, vilket görs för att undersöka om nedskrivning av goodwill är aktuellt eller inte. Diskonteringsräntan är en viktig faktor vid Impairment test.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka i vilken utsträckning företag på Stockholmsbörsen följer IAS 36 p. 134, vilket behandlar nedskrivningsprövning av goodwill. Även vilka faktorer som påverkar denna informationsutgivning analyseras..

Since January 1st 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The intention of the introduction of IFRS is to achieve international harmonization of accounting rules in order to make financial reports more comparable between companies from different countries. The purpose of financial reports presented in accordance with IFRS is to provide information that is useful to the users of the information. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the information regarding goodwill and the Goodwill impairment test, presented in accordance with IFRS, in fact is useful to a specific group of accounting information users, namely equity analysts. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with seven Swedish equity analysts.

Since 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

Background: Sweden and the rest of the world went through the biggest financial crisis at the end of 2008 since the 1930s. The major Swedish banks have goodwill related to their acquisitions inside and outside Scandinavia. Swedbank, SEB and Nordea has acquired in the Baltic countries and Russia, however Handelsbanken has established itself in Great Britain. The crisis in the Baltic countries led that real wages fell, unemployment rose, real estate prices collapsed and the number of borrowers who had trouble repaying their loans increased rapidly. All this led to the problem of impairment of goodwill in the Swedish banks that had expanded rapidly in the Baltic countries.Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the application of IFRS 3 in Swedish banks before, during and after the financial crisis, and to investigate the low-downs in the four majorSwedish banks in 2006-2010.Completion: The study is primarily based on the case studies by the examination of the annual reports from all banks as well as evaluation of the interviews.The authors have chosen to makea strategic choice of a small number of cases through the concentration on the impairment of goodwill in the bank sector of Sweden.Results: The result of this study is that there are problems for banks in implementation of IFRS 3 in practice because of insufficient information in the banks' financial statements.Generous estimates used in the calculation of impairment testing.

Background: 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.Purpose: 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.

Background: Goodwill has been a hot and debated topic for a longer period of time. Researchers have debated how goodwill should be accounted for and have not come to a solution. In 2005 IFRS standards came which meant that goodwill no longer will be amortized according to plan, but to be put through a yearly impairment test.Problem: A number of disclosure requirements in the financial reports have been made in an effort to avoid companies to account for goodwill differently. Apparently there still is a problem of how companies account for goodwill and there are several studies in the subject. But no one has studied how it is between two different industries, which make this study interesting to execute.Purpose/questions: This study have the purpose to investigate how the industries day to day wares and health care regards the disclosure requirements for goodwill by the impairment tests.