Goodwill impairment loss and bond credit rating

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of goodwill impairment losses on bond credit ratings. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use regression analysis to examine the relationship between goodwill impairment losses and bond credit ratings. Findings - The empirical results show a negative relationship between the amount of goodwill impairment losses and bond credit ratings, suggesting that firms with goodwill impairment losses receive lower credit ratings. The authors perform various additional tests, including subsamples in good or bad market time, changes analysis, first time goodwill impairment firms vs subsequent impairment and the two-stage least squares regression analysis to address potential endogeneity issues. The main results persist. Originality/value - This paper links and contributes to two streams of literature: goodwill impairment in accounting literature and bond credit ratings in finance literature. Whether a firm’s goodwill impairment losses affect the firm’s bond credit rating remains an interesting question that has not been examined previously. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that directly examines the relationship between goodwill impairment losses and bond ratings at the firm level.