Within its goodwill and impairment project, the Board is investigating how companies can provide users of financial statements with better information about mergers and acquisitions (business combinations) at a reasonable cost. This investigation includes the challenging question of how companies should account for goodwill after the business combination.

The six-page article discusses the Board's preliminary views that:

• "we should enhance disclosure objectives and requirements to improve the information provided to users about an acquired business and its subsequent performance, even if that information must be on a combined basis where the acquired business has been integrated into an existing business;
• it is not feasible to make the impairment test significantly more effective at recognising impairment losses of goodwill;
• reintroducing amortisation of goodwill would not provide significantly better information to users;
• we should reduce the cost and complexity of the impairment test by providing relief from the mandatory annual quantitative impairment test for goodwill;
• we should also reduce the cost and complexity of the impairment test by simplifying some of the requirements for estimating value in use;
• we should not allow more intangible assets to be included in goodwill; and
• we should enhance transparency by requiring companies to present total equity before goodwill in their balance sheets."

The article notes that the Board plans to issue a discussion paper on these issues at the end of 2019.