Purchased Goodwill In International Acquisitions. Microsoft-Nokia Case

Purchased Goodwill appears when a company acquires another company. It can be defined as an intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value. International accounting bodies such as the IASC or the FASB require acquiring firms to record goodwill as an asset when they purchase a target firm and pay more than the fair market value of the identifiable net assets of that firm. As a consequence of these regulations, the goodwill appears in accounts of a company only when it acquires certain intangible assets that are not identifiable. Because the purchased goodwill arises in business combinations this concept is detailed in the standards on business combinations (FAS 141 and IFRS 3) rather than those on intangible assets and goodwill (FAS 142 and IAS 38). In this paper I present the modality in which is perceived currently the purchased goodwill and its components. In the present it is considered that the purchased goodwill is the result of an evaluation made by the bidding company over the target company and appreciating the contribution of it to the achievement of the strategic objectives of the purchaser. Goodwill is perceived as the sum of the present values of the additional cash-flows that can be generated at the level of acquiring company as result of acquisition. The sources of these future additional cash-flows are considered, in the present, unidentifiable intangible assets of the target company and the estimated synergies between entities that will combine. In the final part of my working paper I have analysed the level and the components of the goodwill that was paid in the Microsoft-Nokia transaction. As is reflected in the Microsoft Annual Report 2015 (Note 9 Business Combination), “the goodwill had a proportion of 37% in the value of total acquired assets and, was primarily attributed to the increased synergies that were expected to be achieved from the integration of NDS “. In this paper I present the results of my analysis related by the types of synergies that was estimated to be obtained as result of this transaction.