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Great new article on contemporary M&A: Getting a Grip on Intangibles

Posted by Mary Adams on October 27, 2010 at 7:04pm
Russ Banham at Treasury and Risk did a great job of laying out the importance of intangibles in mergers and acquisitions in this new article: Getting a Grip on Intangibles

Since 70% of the average deal is intangible and 50% of the average deal is goodwill, there is a screaming need for better information about what's really going on in acquisitions. I'm happy to say that Russ quoted me together with Mark Sirower at Deloitte, Dan Tiemann at KPMG, Robert Bruner at University of Virginia's Darden School, Stephan Thollot at E&Y, as well as the CFO's of Steel Technologies, Arrow Electronics, PMI Group and Corning.

The message of the article is clear: intangibles are not going away. M&A professionals ignore them at their own peril.

Would love to hear stories from others about intangibles in mergers...
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Comments

  • Mary Adams July 7, 2011 at 5:51pm
    Doug- I hadn't heard the term infonomics before  but I like it. Just read the wikipedia article on it. It really seems to be very similar to IC thinking. Maybe you could share more at a future IC Practitioners Virtual Meeting? Mary
  • Doug Laney July 7, 2011 at 4:34pm
    It's clear to me that the missing factor in truly valuing organizations are their information assets. I guest lecture at business schools and teach a course at Deloitte on the topic of "infonomics". Since my days as a Gartner researcher, I have posited methods for quantifying information asset value. It's fascinating that information meets all litmus test criteria for an intangible asset, but only in the rarest of circumstances is represented on the balance sheet. Why? Simply that the balance sheet standard established by the SEC in the '30s predates the use of information technology and financial standards bodies haven't caught up.
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