Companies wrote down goodwill in spades last year as the pandemic took a toll

An article in The Wall Street Journal quoted Feng Gu on businesses reporting the largest amount of “goodwill” on their balance sheets in over a decade as their assets declined during COVID-19.  “When a public company records an impairment charge on its balance sheets, it tells investors that a transaction didn’t go as well as expected,” according to the article. “All of a sudden,” Gu said, “the economy enters into recession and a company has a very hard time justifying the value of its goodwill.”