Business Management

As a new accounting graduate, you have just joined the financial reporting unit of a listed company* when your manager, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), approaches you with your first task. In their last meeting, the board members of your company is concerned about the company's reputational standing in the market relating to the quality of financial information in the annual report and keen to ensure that asset values are appropriately reflected and disclosed in the company's latest annual report. Therefore, the Board decided to have a review of the relevant treatments and disclosures in the company's latest annual report pertaining to impairment and whether these treatments and disclosures are aligned with the requirements for impairment as per AASB 136. Required: Based on the Board's decision, the CFO asks you to draft a business research report addressed to the Board of Directors on the following: a. Provide a detailed explanation of the impairment write-down(s) made by your company in the year ended 30 June 2017. Your explanation should include a discussion of the asset/s that were impaired, the amount of the impairment write-down, the indicators of impairment and relevant disclosures in the 30 June 2017 financial report in relation to impairment testing. b. A critical analysis of some of the complexities and key issues involved in impairment testing. In your analysis, you can refer to one or more publications issued by the ‘Big 4’ firms, accounting professional bodies or academic journals. c. Critically analyse to what extent the latest annual report of your company meets the disclosure requirements for Impairment as per AASB 136. d. Based on your findings in part c, critically discuss to what extent the disclosures on impairment align with the objective of general purpose financial reporting and, as a conclusion, recommend actions for improvement.