Brand Finance, in collaboration with Corporate Excellence, has presented for the second time in Spain the results of the report Global Intangible Financial Tracker 2017. The presentation took place in Bankinter's Auditorium under the name of "The revolution and impact of intangibles on organisational value", with the participation of David Haigh, founder and CEO of Brand Finance. Borja Martín, one of Proa Comunicación's consultants, attended the presentation on behalf of Proa Comunicación.
This report, produced by the global consultancy Brand Finance in collaboration with the Corporate Excellence-Centre for Reputation Leadership, analyses annually how the value of intangible assets fluctuates in global equity markets. This year's results take into account more than 57,000 companies from over 160 jurisdictions.
In the results presentation it was commented that the new standards call for amortising intangible assets with indefinite useful lives and capitalising expenses incurred during the development phase as intangible assets. According to Haigh, "current accounting rules have proven to be inadequate for effective reporting on intangible assets. The report notes in this regard that one area for future development is the recognition of internally created intangible assets such as brands, consumer-related assets and trademarks.
This year's results indicate that the sector where intangibles The most important sectors are the advertising industry (91%), followed by aerospace defence and biotechnology. In fact, its tangible assets comprise only 9% of the total enterprise value. This sector is also characterised by having the highest proportion (83%) of goodwill in relation to the total intangible assets reported. In Spain, meanwhile, it is in the entertainment sector that intangibles are most important (93%), followed by business services (90%) and technology (87%).
The report also shows the weight of intangible assets by country, and highlights Denmark, Belgium, United States, Brazil and United Kingdom as the most intangible countries in the world. When reviewing the total amount of intangibles reported and their evolution over the last five years, Taiwan is the country that has grown the most in this regard, followed by South Korea and Thailand. The last position in the ranking is occupied by China, although it is worth noting that the increase in the volume of intangibles reported has been considerable in recent years, rising from 189 billion dollars in 2014 to 406 billion dollars in the current period.
In short, and in the words of Ángel Alloza, CEO of Corporate Excellence, "given that intangible value represents a growing part of the value of an organisation, accounting that takes a holistic view of the business helps organisations make better decisions and to report on the full creation of value".
You can download the full report by clicking here here.