To: Biomaven who wrote (8043 ) 3/19/2003 3:12:52 PM From: Biomaven Respond to of 52153 Here's an interesting accounting disclosure by BMY:In January 2003, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Interpretation No. 46, Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities (FIN 46). FIN 46 requires a variable interest entity to be consolidated by a company if that company is subject to a majority of the risk of loss from the variable interest entity's activities or entitled to receive a majority of the entity's residual returns or both. FIN 46 also requires disclosures about variable interest entities that a company is not required to consolidate but in which it has a significant variable interest. The consolidation requirements of FIN 46 apply immediately to variable interest entities created after January 31, 2003 and to existing entities in the first fiscal year or interim period beginning after June 15, 2003. Certain of the disclosure requirements apply to all financial statements issued after January 31, 2003, regardless of when the variable interest entity was established. The Company is in the process of assessing what impact this pronouncement will have on its consolidated financial statements. Based on its preliminary analysis of the impact of FIN 46, the Company believes that it is reasonably possible that ImClone will meet the criteria to be considered a variable interest entity in relation to the Company. Accordingly, the Company included the required transitional disclosures of FIN 46 in Note 8, Alliances and Investments, to the restated consolidated financial statements. Clearly any pharma/biotech deals going forward will have to be structured to avoid this forced consolidation. The provision was originally meant to deal with Enron-type deals - looks like it may have a much broader reach than that. Peter