Goodwill impairment : causes and impact

Goodwill has been in the focus of interest of academics and practitioners for many years now. Research interest has been fuelled by its discretionary nature, the large amounts of its write- downs combined with adverse impact potential on financial statements and loopholes in accounting regulations. This thesis includes three empirical essays on the causes and impact of goodwill impairment write-downs. Its overall objective is to provide a more insightful and comprehensive understanding of the goodwill impairment process. The first empirical essay explores the role of goodwill write-downs in .the rating assessment process. It aims to uncover rating agencies' perception of goodwill using an accounting predictive model on ex post basis and comparing accounting treatments of goodwill as currently or recently applicable under UK GAAP. Results suggest that raters ignore goodwill and its write-downs in their annual rating analyses. While this evidence is consistent with pre- FRS 10 business reality in the UK, it raises questions about the efficiency of impairment regulations on national and international level. The second empirical essay investigates managerial choices related to goodwill impairment in the UK. Findings suggest that while managers are likely to base the decision whether to impair goodwill on financial performance indicators, they might adjust the amount of the impairment charge at their discretion for reporting purposes. The third empirical essay investigates two of the drivers of financial performance (industrial regulation and competition) and their relation to goodwill using a case study approach. The evidence suggests that these two phenomena could provide an early warning indicator to regulators, auditors and financial statement users about goodwill impairment potential of the individual firm or an industry sector. Furthermore, the room for managerial discretion provided by the discount rates in the impairment calculation is explored. Results show that discount rates can be adjusted using commonly accepted parameters in practice to justify a wide range of discount rates and, consequently, a variety of impairment opportunities at the discretion of management.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Optical and Electrical Measurements Reveal the Orientation Mechanism of Homoleptic Iridium-Carbene Complexes

Understanding and controlling the driving forces for molecular alignment in optoelectronic thin-film devices is of crucial importance for improving their performance. In this context, the preferential orientation of organometallic iridium complexes is in the focus of research to benefit from their improved light-outcoupling efficiencies in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Although there has been great progress concerning the orientation behavior for heteroleptic Ir complexes, the mechanism behind the alignment of homoleptic complexes is still unclear yet. In this work, we present a sky-blue phosphorescent dye that shows variable alignment depending on systematic modifications of the ligands bound to the central iridium atom. From an optical study of the transition dipole moment orientation and the electrically accessible alignment of the permanent dipole moment, we conclude that the film morphology is related to both the aspect ratio of the dye and the local electrostatic interaction of the ligands with the film surface during growth. These results indicate a potential strategy to actively control the orientation of iridium-based emitters for the application in OLEDs

Effect of a twin-emitter design strategy on a previously reported thermally activated delayed fluorescence organic light-emitting diode

Authors thank EU Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement No. 812872 (TADFlife) for funding this project. Further support was obtained by the Helmholtz Association Program at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The German Research Foundation (formally Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG) in the framework of SFB1176 Cooperative Research Centre "Molecular Structuring of Soft Matter" (CRC1176, A4, B3, C2, C6) and the cluster 3D Matter Made To Order all funded under Germany’s Excellence Strategy 2082/1--390761711 are greatly acknowledged for financial contributions. We acknowledge support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK (grant EP/P010482/1), from the International Collaborative Research Program of Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University (grant # 2020-37 and 2021-37), and from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H05840 (Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas, “Dynamic Exciton”). ZZ acknowledges the financial support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC, 201606890009) for his PhD studies. EZ-C is a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research fellow (SRF\R1\201089).In this work we showcase the emitter DICzTRZ in which we employed a twin-emitter design of our previously reported material, ICzTRZ . This new system presented a redshifted emission at 488 nm compared to that of ICzTRZ at 475 nm and showed a comparable photoluminescence quantum yield of 57.1% in a 20 wt% CzSi film versus 63.3% for ICzTRZ . The emitter was then incorporated within a solution-processed organic light-emitting diode that showed a maximum external quantum efficiency of 8.4%, with Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage coordinate of (0.22, 0.47), at 1 mA cm−2.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Organic Photovoltaic Cells: From Performance Improvement to Manufacturing Processes

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111806/1/smll201402883.pd

Transcriptome profiling reveals differential gene expression of detoxification enzymes in a hemimetabolous tobacco pest after feeding on jasmonate-silenced Nicotiana attenuata plants

Background The evolutionary arms race between plants and insects has driven the co-evolution of sophisticated defense mechanisms used by plants to deter herbivores and equally sophisticated strategies that enable phytophagous insects to rapidly detoxify the plant’s defense metabolites. In this study, we identify the genetic determinants that enable the mirid, Tupiocoris notatus, to feed on its well-defended host plant, Nicotiana attenuata, an outstanding model for plant-insect interaction studies. Results We used an RNAseq approach to evaluate the global gene expression of T. notatus after feeding on a transgenic N. attenuata line which does not accumulate jasmonic acid (JA) after herbivory, and consequently accumulates very low levels of defense metabolites. Using Illumina sequencing, we generated a de novo assembled transcriptome which resulted in 63,062 contigs (putative transcript isoforms) contained in 42,610 isotigs (putative identified genes). Differential expression analysis based on RSEM-estimated transcript abundances identified 82 differentially expressed (DE) transcripts between T. notatus fed on wild-type and the defenseless plants. The same analysis conducted with Corset-estimated transcript abundances identified 59 DE clusters containing 85 transcripts. In both analyses, a larger number of DE transcripts were found down-regulated in mirids feeding on JA-silenced plants (around 70%). Among these down-regulated transcripts we identified seven transcripts possibly involved in the detoxification of N. attenuata defense metabolite, specifically, one glutathione-S-transferase (GST), one UDP-glucosyltransferase (UGT), five cytochrome P450 (P450s), and six serine proteases. Real-time quantitative PCR confirmed the down-regulation for six transcripts (encoding GST, UGT and four P450s) and revealed that their expression was only slightly decreased in mirids feeding on another N. attenuata transgenic line specifically silenced in the accumulation of diterpene glycosides, one of the many classes of JA-mediated defenses in N. attenuata. Conclusions The results provide a transcriptional overview of the changes in a specialist hemimetabolous insect associated with feeding on host plants depleted in chemical defenses. Overall, the analysis reveals that T. notatus responses to host plant defenses are narrow and engages P450 detoxification pathways. It further identifies candidate genes which can be tested in future experiments to understand their role in shaping the T. notatus-N. attenuata interactio