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Technology Stocks : Jimbo's Playhouse/CPQ -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mao II who wrote (8297)	12/7/2000 10:29:21 AM
From: Kenya AA	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12662

M2 and Thread: This is important stuff: Thursday December 7, 2:54 am Eastern Time FASB proposes continuing "pooling" accounting-WSJ NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. accounting-rule makers proposed allowing U.S. companies to continue making acquisitions without having to take large periodic earnings write-downs, the Wall Street Journal reported in its electronic edition Thursday. The proposal by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) came after intense pressure from investment bankers and large technology companies, and represents a pullback from a key provision of the board's plan to eliminate so-called pooling-of-interests accounting, the paper said. Investment banks and many large companies have relied extensively on pooling-of-interests accounting to fuel their acquisition-oriented growth strategies, the paper noted. Under pooling, merging companies simply combine their assets and don't have to account for any premiums paid by the acquirers as goodwill, the paper explained. Currently, companies using purchase accounting methods for acquisitions must record as goodwill any premiums they pay above acquired companies' tangible net-asset values, and then amortise that goodwill over periods lasting as long as 40 years, the paper said. Before Wednesday, the seven-member board had proposed reducing that period to 20 years, the paper said. The Norwalk, Conn.-based board still is proposing to eliminate pooling-of-interest accounting, but it stepped back from requiring companies using purchase accounting to amortise purchased goodwill on a periodic basis, the paper said. Under Wednesday's proposal, however, companies would have to write down the purchased goodwill on their balance sheets only if and when they determined that the value of that goodwill has become impaired, the paper reported. Some U.S. lawmakers had been pushing the FASB to delay changes to the ways of recording corporate mergers on balance sheets. K