Description: Presented at May 1985 Spring Meeting. This session discussed: AICPA activity in purchase accounting, Merger/Acquisition accounting, Assumption reinsurance, Minority interest accounting alternatives, Foreign mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures accounting, Tax considerations in structuring mergers and acquisitions.

Description: A discussion of alternative meanings to “Best” in best estimate. When one is trying to estimate a result that is normally distributed, the mean, median and mode will all equal one another. However if the results are not normally distributed, different variance metrics will result in different “best” estimates. When different parts of a financial statement use different criteria for measuring best estimates and different processes for handling variances, the results can be volatile, unpredictable and perhaps unreasonable.