Write-off, impairment: YuuZoo, ISR must tell more

A TOUGH economy can force companies to reassess the value that they had attached to their assets and businesses, and sometimes that reassessment results in a write-off or an impairment.

But as the write-offs and impairments pile up, regulators and investors must be extra vigilant against listed companies that claim an irreversible loss on an asset's value but fail to properly explain why that loss had to be incurred. In particular, social shopping network platform YuuZoo Corp and investment services firm ISR Capital are two recent examples where clarity from the companies is sorely needed.

The need for those explanations exists on a few levels. Most fundamentally, when a company says that it is not actually worth what was previously declared, shareholders need to understand why the discrepancy existed. From a prudential perspective, shareholders also need to guard against possible shenanigans, because write-offs and impairments could be the result of over-aggressive revenue recognition or improper transfers of assets out of a company.