Goodwill impairments and chief executive officer tenure

The purpose of this paper is to examine the tenure of the chief executive officers of publicly held companies and their corresponding goodwill impairment decisions. An opportunity for managers to manage earnings exists via the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) goodwill accounting rules. It is hypothesized that CEOs will recognize this impairment in the early years of their tenure because blame can be placed on prior management's acquisition decisions, expensing goodwill early will make future earnings look better, or an objective evaluation of the reporting unit increases impairments.