Commentary: Some Further Evidence on Discount Rate Selection in the Context of Goodwill Impairment Testing

In an earlier edition of this journal, we published evidence relating to the nature of discount rates chosen by a sample of large Australian-listed firms in the context of their goodwill impairment testing (Carlin and Finch 2009). We argued that our evidence suggested that the rigour of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) goodwill impairment testing process was being undermined by inappropriate choice of discount rates on the part of many firms. In a commentary published alongside our article, questions were raised as to the validity of our conclusions and the methodology we applied in our study (Gallery 2009). Subsequently, Bradbury has also contributed to the debate, raising similar concerns to those voiced by Gallery (Bradbury 2010). In this brief paper, we provide further and better particulars in relation to our original dataset in a bid to assist those who have taken an interest in this debate to further inform their view of the merits (or otherwise) of the case we made in our original article.