New Accounting Pronouncements

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2011

New Accounting Pronouncements [Abstract]

New Accounting Pronouncements

2. New Accounting Pronouncements

In May 2011, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") issued new guidance concerning fair value measurements and disclosure. The new guidance is the result of joint efforts by the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board to develop a single, converged fair value framework on how to measure fair value and the necessary disclosures concerning fair value measurements. The guidance is effective for interim and annual periods beginning after December 15, 2011 and no early adoption is permitted. The Company is currently evaluating this new guidance and its materiality to the consolidated financial statements.

In June 2011, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update ("ASU") No. 2011-05, "Comprehensive Income (Topic 220): Presentation of Comprehensive Income."  This ASU increases the prominence of other comprehensive income ("OCI") in the financial statements and provides companies two options for presenting OCI, which until now has typically been placed within the statement of equity.  One option allows an OCI statement to be included with the statement of operations, and together the two will make a statement of total comprehensive income.  Alternately, companies may present an OCI statement separate from the statement of operations; however, the two statements will have to appear consecutively within a financial report.  This ASU does not affect the types of items that are reported in OCI, nor does it affect the calculation or presentation of earnings per share.  For public companies, this ASU is effective for periods beginning after December 15, 2011.  The Company will adopt the OCI presentation requirements required by ASU No. 2011-05 beginning with its first quarter in 2012 and does not anticipate that the adoption will have a material impact on the consolidated financial statements.

In September 2011, the FASB issued ASU No. 2011-08: "Intangibles – Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): Testing Goodwill for Impairment." This ASU permits an entity to first assess qualitative factors to determine whether it is more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount as a basis for determining whether it is necessary to perform the two-step goodwill impairment test. The more-likely-than-not threshold is defined as having a likelihood of more than 50 percent. Under this ASU, an entity is not required to calculate the fair value of a reporting unit unless the entity determines that it is more likely than not that its fair value is less than its carrying amount. ASU 2011-08 is effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2011. We do not expect that ASU 2011-08 will have any material impact on our financial position and results of operations because it is a change in application of the goodwill impairment test only.