This paper examines whether financial disclosures on acquired entities
allow investors to effectively predict goodwill impairment, a task that
has become more important following the recent abolishment of goodwill
amortization. In predicting goodwill impairment, we use variables relating
to the postacquisition performance of the operating segment(s) to
which the acquired company’s assets are allocated as well as to the
characteristics of the acquisition. We find that available disclosures do
not provide financial statement users with information to adequately predict
future write-offs of goodwill. In fact, the characteristics of the original
acquisitions are more powerful predictors of eventual goodwill
write-offs than those based on segment disclosures of the acquired entities’
performance. We also find that goodwill write-offs lag behind the
economic impairment of goodwill by an average of three to four years.
For one-third of the companies examined, the delay can extend up to ten
years. Although most of our analyses are conducted on goodwill generated
before the introduction of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards
No. 142 (SFAS 142), certain features of the sample and the
analysis suggest that the results are generalizable to the current reporting
regime. Sensitivity tests on a smaller sample of goodwill write-offs
made upon the adoption of SFAS 142 confirm this expectation.