Measurement and Impairment of Intangible Assets in the Italian Stock Exchange

The current economic and financial crisis has had a very relevant impact upon companies worldwide. This paper aims at investigating effects produced upon the financial statements of a sample of 90 Italian listed companies with specific reference to the intangible assets and goodwill, which are in many cases crucial for listed companies’ performance and evaluation. Specifically, goodwill should reflect the forecast on future trends and be, if necessary, written-off. This paper examines the trend exposed in the analysed 2007-2009 annual and half-yearly financial statements. Under a technical point of view, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) should represent an appropriate basis to evaluate whether the mentioned crisis has been “converted” into accounting data, as they are naturally destined to satisfy investors’ information needs and should support decision makers to express their judgement on companies’ future profitability. This circumstance provides the chance to propose some considerations concerning the adoption of IFRS in listed companies.