You are the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of a Utility Company which owns several nuclear power plants. One of your plants has had many severe operational problems and state regulators are refusing to grant permission to restart the plant. In fact you will never get permission to restart this particular plant. The book value of this plant is 3.5 billion dollars.
Management has an offer to sell the plant to Canada. This is the only offer they have. Canada will disassemble the entire plant and ship it to Canada at their expense. They want to generate electricity to light up "We Love America" billboards all across the country without using oil. J They are offering 250 million dollars for the plant. Assuming management can get state department approval for the sale, they are still unsure as to whether to sell or not. Canada wants the plant shipped within 6 months and is pushing for a contract signing date.
What accounting issues (and accounting issues only) are present in this situation? Assuming the transaction takes place, what gain or loss would be recorded by your company?