Goodwillnedskrivningar före och efter finanskrisen : en jämförande studie mellan industribranschen och IT- och telekombranschen

IFRS 3 has had a big impact on how listed companies treat the recognition of goodwill. The underlying assumptions of the impairment tests are based on management’s estimates of the future, which could lead to subjective evaluations. When IFRS was introduced in 2005 Sweden was in a boom period, up until 2008 when the global financial crisis emerged and hence subsequent recession. A financial crisis may lead to the needs to make write-downs on both financial and non-financial assets. Therefore the authors want to examine in what way the financial crisis in 2008 affected companies' goodwill impairments. Since there are differences between the industrial sector and the IT and telecommunications sector in terms of accounting for goodwill, it is interesting to compare these sectors to examine if there are any significant differences.The purpose of the study is to examine how the recent financial crisis in 2008 affected companies' impairments of goodwill and assumptions in impairment testing, as well as the extent to which businesses disclosed about the impairment losses before and after the financial crisis to see if there are any significant differences between the industrial sector and the IT and telecommunications sector. The companies that are included in the study are companies that are listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. With a quantitative method, the authors have chosen to examine the annual reports of 15 companies in the industrial sector and 15 companies in the IT and telecommunications sector from the years 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010. The authors have chosen as methods for the research a quantitative content analysis and performed statistical calculations. The parameters studied include disclosure on goodwill, total impairment losses, discount rates, growth rates and cash-generating units.It was only one of the study’s hypotheses that was correct. This hypothesis dealt with the discount rates before and after the financial crisis, were the study showed a significant difference between the IT and telecommunications sector and the industrial sector before the financial crisis compared to the period after the financial crisis. Another difference that was significant was the industrial sectors total impairment losses before and after the financial crisis, were the sector’s total impairment losses increased between the examined periods. The average discount rate in the IT and telecommunications sector increased between the examined periods and this difference was also considered to be significant. Furthermore, the study showed that the industrial sector had more extensive disclosure on goodwill impairments after the financial crisis compared with the previous period, unlike the IT and telecommunications sector that disclosed about goodwill impairments to a lesser extent after the financial crisis.This thesis is written in Swedish.