Reference no: EM132844850

Question - In 2006, Toshiba acquired Westinghouse, a nuclear reactor company, for $5.4 billion US dollars. Assume that Westinghouse's net assets (market value of assets - liabilities) were worth $3.1 billion dollars at the time of the acquisition, and that Toshiba paid in cash.

In 2011, the well-known Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred, drastically decreasing demand for nuclear reactors across the globe. At the time, Toshiba insisted that the Westinghouse was unaffected, due to high demand for its other services (such as nuclear reactor maintenance). However, due to pressure from their auditor, PwC, Toshiba proceeded to take a $2.3 billion US dollar impairment charge to goodwill in 2016, 5 years later.

In the end, Toshiba decided to sell off the Westinghouse group to Brookfield, a Canadian asset managing firm, in January of 2018. Brookfield was to acquire the firm for 4.6 billion US dollars, by paying 4 billion US dollars in cash, and assuming 600 million US dollars of Westinghouse's liabilities.

Required -

1) Record the initial purchase of Westinghouse, from Toshiba's perspective (in USD).

2) Record the subsequent goodwill impairment.

3) Record the sale of Westinghouse from Toshiba's perspective, using the following simplifying assumption. Treat Westinghouse as two accounts: one big PP&E asset (call it "Westinghouse assets"), and one big liability ("Westinghouse liabilities"). Further, assume that the only change in Westinghouse's assets and liabilities while owned by Toshiba was the goodwill impairment.