Income Statement Effects of Derivative Fair Value Accounting: Evidence from Bank Holding Companies Hui Zhou University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
[email protected] I am grateful to my dissertation committee members Theodore Sougiannis (chair), Gans Narayanamoorthy (director of research), Louis Chan, and Wei Li for their time and guidance. I thank an anonymous referee for very helpful comments and Paddy Sivadasan for help with data analysis. This paper has also benefited from Rashad Abdel-khalik, Paul Beck, James Gong, Mark Kohlbeck, Susan Krische, Mark Peecher, and seminar participants at the University of Illinois. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Richard D. Irwin Foundation. Income Statement Effects of Derivative Fair Value Accounting: Evidence from Bank Holding Companies Abstract SFAS 133 requires earnings recognition of most types of fair value based hedge ineffectiveness. This earnings recognition requirement was the focal point of controversy surrounding the adoption of SFAS 133. The debate also reflects the more general controversy over whether the recognition in earnings of a new value relevant but potentially volatile accounting item improves or dilutes earnings as a summary performance measure. Using a sample of bank holding companies, I find evidence that the newly recognized earnings component following the adoption of SFAS 133—the fair- value-based hedging performance measure, improves the value and risk relevance of accounting earnings. The findings of this study are relevant to the evaluation of SFAS 133 as well as the ongoing debate on the income statement treatment of net asset changes due to the application of fair value accounting. 1. Introduction Prior to the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No.