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 an Accounting Standards Update.

November 6, 2012 FASB Board Meeting

Liquidation basis of accounting. The Board discussed a summary of the comments received on Proposed Accounting Standards Update, Presentation of Financial Statements (Topic 205): The Liquidation Basis of Accounting. The summary will be published on the Liquidation Basis project page of the FASB website.

The Board also discussed a project plan for completing its redeliberations.

No decisions were made.


Consolidation: policy and procedures. In the November 3, 2011 Exposure Draft, the Board proposed an analysis for both variable interest entities (VIEs) and voting partnerships and other similar entities (partnerships) for purposes of determining whether a decision maker is acting in a principal or agent capacity. That analysis contains both power and economic elements. The proposed requirements differed for partnerships (and similar entities) and VIEs. A general partner acting as a principal was automatically considered as holding a controlling financial interest requiring consolidation of the other entity. A principal in a VIE was not automatically deemed the holder of controlling financial interest (primary beneficiary) of the VIE.

In this meeting, the Board decided to align the principal versus agent analysis for VIEs and partnerships by requiring that a decision maker that is determined to be the principal of a VIE to be automatically considered to be the primary beneficiary of the VIE.