Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has announced that the committee will host a roundtable discussion of the treatment of goodwill under proposed new accounting standards for corporate mergers.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is considering a rule that would eliminate the pooling-of-interest method of accounting for corporate mergers and require that all business combinations be accounted for using the purchase method. The roundtable discussion will focus on accounting for goodwill – an asset that is recognized under the purchase method as the difference between the price paid by the acquiring company and the book value of the firm acquired.

Participants in the roundtable discussion have been asked to address the nature of goodwill and whether changes in the value of goodwill can be identified, measured, and accounted for.

WHAT:

Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
Roundtable Discussion of Accounting for Goodwill

WHEN:

10:00 a.m. Wednesday, June 14, 2000

WHERE:

Room 538, Senate Dirksen Building

WHO:

Participants in the discussion will include:

Trevor Harris, managing director of equity research, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, New York
Edmund Jenkins, chairman, Financial Accounting Standards Board
Calvin Johnson, professor of law, University of Texas School of Law, Austin
Alfred King, chairman of Valuation Research Corp., Princeton, N.J.
David Martin, CEO, M-CAM Inc., Charlottesville, Va.
Dennis Monson, partner, KPMG, New York
E. Lee Beard, president, First Federal Bank, Hazleton, Pa.
Dennis Powell, corporate controller, Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif.
T.J. Rodgers, president and CEO, Cypress Semiconductor Corp., San Jose, Calif.
Robert Ryan, senior vice president and CFO, Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis
Arthur Wyatt, adjunct professor of accountancy, University of Illinois