Columbia Law School
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FASB
Insights on the Incidence, Disclosure, and Risk of Corporate Litigation
Public companies face a wide range of legal claims, yet the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have questioned whether public companies provide sufficient disclosure to warn investors of potential losses from these claims. …
Why Are Acquiring Companies So Reluctant to Amortize Purchased Goodwill?
Controversy has persisted in recent decades over the accounting treatment of the vast sums expended on purchased goodwill – variously described as a “present-value estimate of future rents” from an acquisition or “the difference between what you pay [for an …
The “S” in ESG: Human Capital Management
Over the past decade, ESG has morphed from a fringe concern into one of the most prominent topics in corporate governance – and a flourishing research area as well.[1] Nevertheless, some notable blindspots remain. Based on a recent survey, …
Do Companies Lobby Against Mandatory Disclosure to Protect Proprietary Information?
Critics of mandatory public disclosure often argue that it may put disclosing firms at a competitive disadvantage by requiring them to reveal potentially proprietary information to rivals. For instance, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) proposed to mandate more …
Making ESG Metrics Trustworthy
Investors are flocking to companies with good environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores and are threatening to shun companies with poor ones. For many investors, ESG scores are critical to a company’s long-term profitability, not to mention its impact on …
How Material Are Disclosures in Annual Reports?
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) (collectively, “regulators”) have expressed concern over “disclosure overload,” or the concern that the sheer volume of disclosure in annual reports makes it difficult for investors to identify and …
Economic Consequences of Corporate Governance Disclosure
Related party transactions (RPTs) refer to a transfer of resources, services, or obligations between a reporting entity and a related party and usually offer insiders a way to expropriate wealth from other investors via self-dealing. Both the Financial Accounting Standards …
Double Trouble: An Analysis of IRS Attention and Financial Reporting
Existing research provides limited insight into what draws the attention of tax authorities to public information and how that information is used in the process of examining corporate tax positions. For publicly traded firms in the U.S., the Internal Revenue …
The Cost of Disclosure Regulation: Evidence from D&O Insurance and Non-Meritorious Securities Litigation
There is an extensive literature on the benefits of mandatory disclosure by firms, but measuring the costs of such disclosure has been more challenging (Leuz and Wysocki 2016). In particular, while some believe that mandatory disclosure could increase litigation against …
SEC Discusses Advancing the Capital Markets with High-Quality Information
Thank you for the kind introduction. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak at this financial reporting conference for the second time.
Before I continue, let me remind you that the views expressed today are my own and not necessarily …
The Downside to Limiting Manager Entrenchment
Critics often argue that firms and financial standard setters fail to understand fully the implications of their corporate governance policies. The general belief is that stronger governance almost necessarily leads to better firm outcomes. This idea rests on the assumption …
Cahill Gordon discusses FASB’s Recent Exposure Drafts on Determinations of Materiality
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “Board”) recently issued two exposure drafts that recommend a series of amendments related to determinations of materiality.1 These efforts form part of the Board’s ongoing disclosure framework project, an initiative dedicated to improving …
Lobbying on Accounting Standards by Auditors
Corporate accounting standards are an important basis for the measurement of firm and managerial performance and for the stewardship of corporate assets in a market economy. Understanding the process that culminates with the creation of accounting standards can provide insights …