"To be or not to be": impairment practices among Indian listed companies

Abstract

India is converging its practices to be consistent with IFRS, but in the case of goodwill impairment how much consistency is there among Indian companies and auditors, and how much impairment has been disclosed. The paper investigates these questions. Arguably, the issue of how India writes-down goodwill is important as Indian companies and the Indian share market are influential throughout the world. It is a question of recognition, measurement and disclosure.

The findings are that different methods of writing down goodwill are recognised implying different methods of measurement. There is even more inconsistency around disclosure as nearly half of the top 50 companies analysed on the Bombay exchange failed to mention any write down of goodwill. Some companies claimed that they were testing for impairment but no case of actual impairment was reported. This, in spite of some compaines reporting declining earnings and share price.