Company believes its most critical accounting estimates relate to legal proceedings, the Company’s pension and postretirement obligations, asset impairments and income taxes. Senior management has discussed the development, selection and disclosure of its critical accounting estimates with the Audit Committee of 3M’s Board of Directors.

 

Legal Proceedings:

 

The categories of claims for which the Company has estimated its probable liability, the amount of its liability accruals, and the estimates of its related insurance receivables are critical accounting estimates related to legal proceedings. Please refer to the section entitled “Accrued Liabilities and Insurance Receivables Related to Legal Proceedings” (contained in “Legal Proceedings” in Note 14) for additional information about such estimates.

 

Pension and Postretirement Obligations:

 

3M has various company-sponsored retirement plans covering substantially all U.S. employees and many employees outside the United States. The Company accounts for its defined benefit pension and postretirement health care and life insurance benefit plans in accordance with Accounting Standard Codification (ASC) 715, Compensation — Retirement Benefits,  in measuring plan assets and benefit obligations and in determining the amount of net periodic benefit cost. ASC 715 requires employers to recognize the underfunded or overfunded status of a defined benefit pension or postretirement plan as an asset or liability in its statement of financial position and recognize changes in the funded status in the year in which the changes occur through accumulated other comprehensive income, which is a component of stockholders’ equity.

 

Pension benefits associated with these plans are generally based primarily on each participant’s years of service, compensation, and age at retirement or termination. Two critical assumptions, the discount rate and the expected return on plan assets, are important elements of expense and liability measurement. The assumed health care trend rate is the most significant postretirement health care assumption. See Note 11 for additional discussion of actuarial assumptions used in determining pension and postretirement health care liabilities and expenses.

 

The Company determines the discount rate used to measure plan liabilities as of the December 31 measurement date for the U.S. pension and postretirement benefit plans. The discount rate reflects the current rate at which the associated liabilities could be effectively settled at the end of the year. The Company sets its rate to reflect the yield of a portfolio of high quality, fixed-income debt instruments that would produce cash flows sufficient in timing and amount to settle projected future benefits. Using this methodology, the Company determined a discount rate of 5.77% for U.S. pension and 5.62% for U.S. postretirement to be appropriate as of December 31, 2009, which is a decrease from the 6.14% rate used as of December 31, 2008. For the international pension and postretirement plans the discount rates also reflect the current rate at which the associated liabilities could be effectively settled at the end of the