Goodwill impairment taken at Suncorp

Ian Rogers
Commercial insurance may be, alongside banking, one of the weaker links in the chain that comprises the Suncorp Metway financial group.

The annual report for Suncorp, published on Friday, shows that the group shaved more than $200 million from the goodwill of its commercial insurance business as of June 2009. Suncorp cut the goodwill for this "cash generating unit" to $1.39 billion from $1.61 billion.

Handily, directors added more than $200 million to the goodwill of its personal insurance business, and with other trivial tweaks in goodwill across five business lines, the aggregate level of goodwill recorded in Suncorp's books remains much the same at $1.535 billion.