Counsel's opinion, page-37

It does make you dig a little deeper as to why Keith has released the counsel opinion to market so early. One would hope he has consulted PwC before doing so. Despite that IMO PwC were always going to make some sort of backside covering statement about the PDL/PDP treatment simply because PNC are a standalone company using FV as their method of valuation - all the others I am aware of are using amortisation. However PwC's comments do not indicate that they vehemently oppose the method either. IMO there had to be some firm agreement about how the matter would be presented in the accounts and further discussions would be contemplated down the track. The lack of consistency in reporting asset valuations has to be overcome from an industry point of view. Fair value treatment of PDL/PDPs is probably more accurate in the hands of skilled and honest operators but as someone else on this site has pointed out - it places the assets inside of a hypothetical black box inside of which operators of less integrity can manipulate values to accord with the picture they want to present. With regulators clearly on the warpath of prevention of this sort of conduct it is difficult to see any acceptance of change in the majority practice of amortising them. This does not mean that the legal view is wrong - it just confirms that the standards can be interpreted as giving an option which is not accepted by all industry operators or for that matter the accounting fraternity.