The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued two exposure drafts proposing improvements to financial reporting of pensions by state and local governments. The two documents, “Accounting and ...

LAST year seemed like a pretty good one for Lucent Technologies. Before taxes, it reported income of $1.06 billion. The numbers, though, are deceiving. Lucent recorded more than $1.1 billion in gains ...

Balance sheet, check. Shining a light on hard-to-value assets, check. Quarterly reports, fuhgettaboutit! Here’s a flash for you folks who’ve been staying up nights worrying that pension gains and ...

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board voted Monday to approve two new standards to improve the accounting and financial reporting of public employee pensions by state and local governments.

The bursting of the stock market bubble has left many private defined benefit pension plans underfunded, raising some concerns about the effects on cash flows and, for a few firms, on financial ...

With so many governments' public pension funds woefully underfunded, there's little doubt that some asset managers are taking higher risks with the funds' assets as they seek higher returns. The ...

GASB issued financial reporting guidance Monday that is designed to address practice issues raised during implementation of the board’s new pension accounting standards for state and local governments ...

This paper discusses recent changes in the generally accepted accounting principles related to accounting for defined benefit pension plans. SFAS 158 imposes new rules related to calculating net ...

They’re cut, dried and dense. Accounting rules are something only a bean counter could love. But they can also repaint the landscape of municipal finance. That’s likely to be the case with new pension ...

Rising rates and a banner year for stocks could lift earnings at some large companies that have made an arcane but significant change to the way their pension plans are valued. Companies including ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Elizabeth Bauer is an actuary who writes about retirement policy. In the corporate pension world, there are two types of actuarial ...