Intangibles e capitale economico: l’approccio della valutazione “strategica”

The objective of this work is to propose a reflection on the composition of the category of intangibles in evaluating the companies’ economic capital. In fact, this component is always the most important element in estimating the company’s value and this is true especially in an economic downturn like the current one, in which tangible assets are imitated by competitors and the differential component of the company’s value is represented by its intangibles. For this reason the literature has developed various assessment methods for the intangible assets, which are well established, however, with reference to those “specific” (trademarks, patents, etc.) that are anyway already present in the balance sheet. Less attention has been paid to “generic” intangible assets, that without an accounting evaluation are more difficult to detect, although they are usually the starting point for the companies evaluation. Often “generic” intangibles are enclosed in the category of goodwill, and this contributes to the difficulty of measuring the same. In this respect, therefore, with the support of the literature, and an exploratory cases study, this paper aims to stimulate reflection about an evaluation methodology called “strategic”, which, according to us, is able to focus precisely on those “generic” intangibles, such as synergies and options, determinant and fundamental to the definition of company value. In particular, case study refers to different companies characterized by bad performance (loss companies) that operate in public transport sector.