Accountants, traditionally, do not care for anything that cannot be measured in a straightforward way. This means that intangible items, such as brands for example, bring confusion and misunderstandings to the world of financial reporting.
The dilemma was probably best summed up by Sir David Tweedie when recalling an encounter with a former chief accountant at the US regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission. “He said the US had found the answer to accounting for goodwill and brands over 30 years ago, and that was to write them off equally over 40 years,” Sir David recounted.
