I just want to get one thing off my chest. The day you let accounting standards dictate to you what you should or should not do in business is the day you should be retiring. Sure, have a look at the standards and see if you can do the right thing a different way to get better treatment under the standards, but, no matter what the accountants say the cashflows are unaffected by the accounting treatment.

It is the cashflows that really matter.

[UPDATE]

OK – there are areas to be careful of. Ones that are going to hammer your P&L without any future or current P&L benefit. An easy example is a no-interest loan from a parent company, with the initial plus being to equity and the unwind going through your P&L. Evil stuff. If you want details, a

sk a question.