A glance at reporting on intangible assets and resources from a German perspective

Georg Lanfermann and Kristina Schwedler

Chapter 20 in Handbook on Intangibles, 2026, pp 350-358 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Better reporting on intangible assets and resources has been discussed internationally, in Europe and in the German literature for decades. In particular, academia and (national) standard setters are frequently addressing this issue. This is triggered by the steadily growing economic importance of service and technology companies over the last decades. Moreover, intangible assets and resources are among the key value drivers of digital transformation. The continued lack of appropriate consideration of intangible assets and resources in the balance sheet, notes to the financial statements and management report continues to feed criticism of the informative value of financial reporting. In view of the increasing differences between book values and market values of companies, there have often been calls in the past for further development of corporate reporting towards so-called business or value reporting. Furthermore, recently there has been a greater awareness for the need for ecologically and socially sustainable business models. Intangible assets and resources are among the key value drivers for the transformation to a sustainable economy. It is therefore not surprising that new impulses for improved reporting on intangible assets and resources are emerging in the context of the current dynamic development of sustainability reporting. Evidently, a large number of intangible assets and resources are relevant for both financial reporting and sustainability reporting. They therefore form an important link between the two reporting worlds, which currently still exist in parallel to a large extent. Hence, intangible assets and resources are an important point of reference for the connectivity and integration of financial and sustainability information that characterise a comprehensive reporting system.

Keywords: Intangible assets; Financial reporting; Sustainability reporting; Value drivers; Digital transformation; German perspective; Corporate disclosure; Reporting integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035306367
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