IFRS Compliance in the Year of the Pig: Hong Kong Impairment Testing

Abstract:Several studies have assumed that the implementation of IFRS can enhance the quality of financial reports, in turn improving their reliability and usefulness (Wyatt, 2005; Barth et al., 2008). However, such studies generally suggest that the introduction of IFRS guarantees consistency and compliance in practice. Given that goodwill impairment testing under IFRS presents a technically challenging task (Hoogendoorn, 2006; Wines et al., 2007) that can materially impact the determination of economic profit, this study focuses on assessing the compliance quality of a large sample of Hong Kong listed firms that are mature IFRS adopters. By examining the detailed disclosures made by 264 large listed firms in 2007, three years after Hong Kong’s implementation of IFRS, an alarmingly high rate of non compliance with HKAS 36 still exists among these goodwill-intensive firms, casting doubts over the hypothesis that lax compliance is a characteristic associated solely with early adoption.