We know the following holds for clean surplus equation: Book 2011 = Book 2010 + Earnings - Dividends Could someone please explain why pension liabilities, FX translation gains/losses and unrecognized gain/loss on available-for-sale securities are a violation of the clean surplus relationship?
Pensions smoothing things, cumulative current translation effect and Unrecognized gain/loss on AFS are recognized in equity as other comprehensible income (which is difficult to forecast). So Book 2011 = Book 2010 + earnings - Dividends +/- other comprehensible income. So clean surplus relationship does not hold.
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Great, thanks. Can we generalize to the effect that any accruals which impact OCI can be seen as a detriment to the clean surplus relationship (and not just pensions or unrecognized / FX translations gains/losses)?
yeah. One important condition of RI method is the existence of clean surplus relationship.
This might be dated but anything that bypasses the income statement and goes directly to equity, examples you gave, are violations of clean surplus.
So, anything that flows though to OCI instead of the NI statement violates the clean surplus relationship: OCI = unrealized g/l in AFS unrealized g/l from CF Hedge unrealized g/l from current rate method pension adjustments
are unrealized gains/losses from CF hedge considered the effective portion?