Amendment of IAS 39 by the IASB in 2008 provided an option to reclassify investments from fair value to historical cost. Whereas this option was available to all firms, it was particularly relevant to banks. We predict that “too important to fail” (TITF) banks took less advantage of this...

We directly test the reliability and relevance of fair values reported by listed private equity firms (LPEs), where the unit of account for the fair value measurement (FVM) is an investment stake in an individual investee company. FVMs are observable for multiple investment stakes, fair values...