Determinants of Purchase Price Allocation Decisions - Accounting for Goodwill In IFRS and US-GAAP Business Combinations

Posted: 19 Jul 2010 Last revised: 12 Nov 2011

See all articles by Christian Ott

Christian Ott

EM Strasbourg

Thomas W. Günther

Dresden University of Technology

Date Written: July 1, 2011

Abstract

The first convergence project of IASB and FASB created the widely equivalent international and U.S. accounting standards for business combinations IFRS 3 and SFAS 141. The purchase price must be allocated to identifiable assets acquired and liabilities assumed with the residual amount recognized as goodwill. This purchase price allocation requires the acquirer firm’s management to exercise judgment and to use their private information. We investigate whether the management opportunistically or efficiently uses the discretion to initially recognize goodwill. Our empirical study is based on hand-collected and archival data for a random sample of 149 IFRS and US-GAAP business combinations of European and U.S. acquirer firms completed between 2005 and 2008. We show that the classic motivations of accounting choice such as debt contracting and political visibility only marginally influence the recognition of goodwill. We find that discretion potentials related to future goodwill impairment testing are already taken into account when initially recognizing goodwill in business combinations. However, our results provide also evidence that the accounting for goodwill in business combinations is not only associated with managerial reporting opportunism but also reflects the target firm’s going concern and synergies resulting from the business combination.

Keywords: Accounting Choice, Business Combinations, Purchase Price Allocation, Goodwill, IFRS 3, SFAS 141

JEL Classification: M40, M41, D82, G34

Suggested Citation

Ott, Christian and Günther, Thomas W., Determinants of Purchase Price Allocation Decisions - Accounting for Goodwill In IFRS and US-GAAP Business Combinations (July 1, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1645124

Christian Ott (Contact Author)

EM Strasbourg ( email )

PEGE
61 avenue de la Forêt Noire
Strasbourg, 67000
France

Thomas W. Günther

Dresden University of Technology ( email )

Einsteinstrasse 3
01069 Dresden, 01062
Germany

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