UPS to Pay $45 Million Penalty for Improperly Valuing Business Unit

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against United Parcel Service Inc. for materially misrepresenting its earnings because it failed to follow generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in valuing one of its worst performing businesses. According to the SEC’s order, UPS determined in 2019 that UPS Freight, a business unit that transported less-than-truckload shipments, was likely to sell for no more than about $650 million. GAAP required UPS to use the price it would receive to sell Freight in calculating whether it needed to write-down the value of the goodwill it had assigned to the business unit on its balance sheet. UPS’s own analysis indicated that nearly $500 million of goodwill it had associated with Freight was impaired.