Redovisning av goodwill – en kvalitativ studie av jämförbarhet i årsredovisningar och halvårsrapporter

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to investigate analysts' and investors' possibility to compare different companies' information in accounting for goodwill under IFRS in their annual and semi-annual reports. The study was based on IAS 34 on interim reporting, IAS 36 impairment of goodwill and the comparability requirement of the financial statements. Therefore, the comparability requirements’ of the IASB Framework, previous studies on the comparability after the implementation of IFRS and also the relevance of goodwill was studied. We used a qualitative textual analysis to examine whether the recognition of goodwill is considered to be comparable between our sample of companies' annual and semi-annual reports from 2008 and 2009 data. The results show that there are discrepancies between their accounts of goodwill resulting in a decreased degree of comparability between companies' financial reports. These differences depend in large part because companies have not fully complied with the requirements of statutory accounting for goodwill under IFRS.