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 an Accounting Standards Update.
March 14, 2011 FASB Board Meeting
Goodwill
impairment assessments. The Board discussed the results of the
extended outreach performed by the staff, affirmed its previous tentative
decisions, and directed the staff to prepare an Exposure Draft proposing a
three-step approach to assessing goodwill for impairment. The first of these
steps would be a qualitative assessment of whether it is more-likely-than-not
that the carrying amount of a reporting unit is greater than its fair value.
The Board decided to propose an effective date of fiscal years beginning
after December 15, 2011, and to permit early adoption. The Board also decided
that the comment period should end on the later of May 31, 2011, or 45 days
after the issuance of an Exposure Draft. The Board directed the staff to include
separate questions in the Exposure Draft to solicit input from public and
nonpublic entities about how each type of those entities assesses the extent of
cost savings under the Exposure Draft.
Next Steps
The
Board’s technical plan calls for the proposed Accounting Standards Update to be
issued in the second quarter of 2011.