As businesses grow and expand into global markets, complicated mergers and acquisitions become everyday occurrences. The increase in merger and acquisition activity brought greater attention to the fact that two transactions that are economically similar may be accounted for differently by companies, and thus, produce dramatically different financial results. Also, the growing volume of international business combinations heightened the urgency to eliminate cross-border differences in accounting standards for business combinations. There is currently an ongoing project to converge IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP). This program reviews the current FASB authoritative guidance dealing with business combinations.