Investors Want Disclosures, Not Goodwill Revamp: Survey

Investors don’t want U.S. accounting rulemakers to revamp goodwill accounting, rather they want businesses to divulge details about deals so they can understand how well acquisitions pan out, a major investor group said Tuesday in a report.

The CFA Insitute report came in response to a Financial Accounting Standards Board plan to consider allowing companies to amortize goodwill—write it down in steady pieces over time—until it entirely disappears from their balance sheets. Under existing accounting rules, companies record goodwill when they buy another business.

The asset, which represents things like the acquired company’s ...