SUMMARY OF BOARD DECISIONS

Summary of Board decisions are provided for the information and convenience of constituents who want to follow the Board’s deliberations. All of the conclusions reported are tentative and may be changed at future Board meetings. Decisions are included in an Exposure Draft for formal comment only after a formal written ballot. Decisions in an Exposure Draft may be (and often are) changed in redeliberations based on information provided to the Board in comment letters, at public roundtable discussions, and through other communication channels. Decisions become final only after a formal written ballot to issue a final standard.

November 24, 2008 Board Meeting

FAS 140 and FIN 46(R) disclosure requirements. The Board decided that a nontransferor reporting entity that is either (1) a sponsor with a variable interest in a qualifying special-purpose entity (SPE) or (2) a servicer with a significant variable interest in a qualifying SPE should disclose its maximum exposure to loss that may result from its involvement with the qualifying SPE.

The Board also reaffirmed that the disclosure requirements of the final FSP should apply to financial information covering both interim and annual reporting periods.

The Board also asked the staff to clarify how straightforward involvements by a transferor in a qualifying SPE should be disclosed (paragraph B4 of the FSP), for example, involvement through a plain vanilla interest rate swap.

FASB ratification of EITF consensuses and consensuses-for-exposure. The Board considered and ratified the following consensuses reached at the November 13, 2008 EITF meeting.

  1. Issue No. 08-6, "Equity Method Investment Accounting Considerations." One Board member dissented from the ratification of this Issue.

  2. Issue No. 08-7, "Accounting for Defensive Intangible Assets."

  3. Issue No. 08-8, "Accounting for an Instrument (or an Embedded Feature) with a Settlement Amount That Is Based on the Stock of an Entity's Consolidated Subsidiary."

The Board also considered and ratified the following consensuses-for-exposure reached at the November 13, 2008 EITF meeting.

  1. Issue No. 08-1, "Revenue Arrangements with Multiple Deliverables." The Board agreed to a 60-day comment period.

  2. Issue No. 08-10, "Selected Statement 160 Implementation Questions." The Board agreed to a comment period ending on December 26, 2008.