Goodwill impairment under pressure
Goodwill appears on 14 recent papers across the tracked journals, with 2 in the last quarter. After a decade of acquisitions at high prices, goodwill on corporate balance sheets is enormous, and standard setters have again debated bringing back amortization. When do firms impair, and does the market believe them?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 14 papers carry a goodwill keyword (6 in accounting journals, 4 in finance): "goodwill" on 7, "goodwill impairment" on 6, "goodwill accounting" on 2. Only 2 were published in July–September 2026. Mergers and acquisitions, the source of goodwill, appear on more than 120 papers over the same period.
Questions
- Do firms delay impairments until a CEO change or a bad year, so that the charge says more about management than about the acquired business?
- Do stock prices react to impairments, or have investors already written the goodwill off?
- Would amortization, as the FASB and IASB have considered, change acquisition prices or only reported earnings?
Data that could help
Goodwill balances and impairment charges (Compustat), acquisition records (SDC), CEO turnover and stock returns.
Next step
Measure how often large impairments follow CEO changes within a year, compared with the base rate, for US and European firms since 2015.