نکاتی درباره مقدار ارزش ارزش های نشان برای بازار قراردادهای انرژی در EITF شماره 98-10

This paper examines whether marked-to-market values of energy trading assets and liabilities of companies that enter into energy contracts are related to market value of equity. The Emerging Issues Task Force of the Financial Accounting Standards Board ruled in November 2002 to ban the use of mark-to-market accounting for energy contracts out of concern that fair values can be easily inflated. We find that the excess of fair value over original value of energy trading assets and energy trading liabilities is not relevant for valuation. It may be inferred that fair values which are subject to management estimates and not verifiable are poor signals of worth and performance (Watts, R., 2003. Conservatism in accounting Part I: Explanations and implications. Accounting Horizons 17, 207–221).

The debate over fair values or historical costs has become increasingly intense. In June 2005, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) endorsed fair value accounting (The Economist, July 30th 2005, p. 14, 65). The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has also issued guidelines for applying fair value accounting (example, FAS 157 on Fair Value Measurement (FASB, 2007a), and FAS 159 on The Fair Value Option for Financial Assets and Financial Liabilities (FASB, 2007b)). Proponents of fair values argue that they are more relevant than historical costs. However, critics of fair values are concerned about the reliability of fair value measures as they are more heavily based on estimates (The Economist, July 30th 2005, pp. 65–66). Empirical evidence indicates that management estimates are in error or misstated (Noland et al., 1998, Beaver and McNichols, 2001 and Lehavy, 2002), subject to manipulation (Bergstresser et al., 2006), and do not improve the quality of financial information (Lev et al., 2009).

This paper examines the value-relevance of mark-to-market values of assets and liabilities of energy trading companies. EITF Issue No. 98-10 allowed for energy trading contracts to be marked-to-market (that is, measured at fair value as of the balance sheet date) with the gains and losses included in earnings and separately disclosed in the financial statements. This consensus was reiterated in EITF Issue No. 00-17, which stated that the estimate of fair value should be based on the best information available in the circumstances. However, EITF Issue No. 02-3 ruled to ban the use of mark-to-market accounting for energy contracts out of concern that fair values can be easily inflated. The EITF was concerned that energy trading assets and profits may be inflated by values of energy contracts that are marked-to-market.