New accounting rules for consolidating business interests took effect at the start of 2010—but companies are still laboring to understand just what they need to add to their financial statements and how to do so.
Most companies have worked through the chore of taking inventory of all their business interests and determining whether they need to be “consolidated” (that is, added to the financial statements), in accordance with the new standard Accounting Standards Codification 810, Consolidation. The standard gives companies new criteria to consider in deciding when a particular business interest belongs on the balance sheet, focusing on whether a company ...