Financial Reporting of Intangible Assets and Intangible Capital. Comparative Study Romania – Spain

Cristina-Ionela Fădur, Daniela Ciotină and Marilena Mironiuc

Abstract:

Purpose – Our paper aims to identify the extent to which companies quoted in the Romanian and Spanish stock exchanges, that must apply the International Financial Reporting Standards truly comply with the provisions of these norms in presenting, in the financial statements, the information on intangible assets. We have also studied a series of indicators of intangible capital, made up of human, relational, and structural capital, in order to identify the extent to which the Romanian and Spanish accounting environments meet the challenges concerning the acknowledgement of intangible elements.

Methodology – We have analyzed the annual financial statements corresponding to the fiscal year closed on 12.31.2011, drawn according to IAS/IFRS provisions, for 19 companies listed in the Bucharest Stock Exchange and 26 Spanish companies quoted in the Madrid Stock Exchange, components of the IBEX 35 market index, and we have computed the mean degree of dissemination of the information on intangible assets based on the points obtained by each company to a set of questions, designed in the spirit of the IAS 38 provisions. In the data collection stage, we resorted to mediated data collection techniques from the annual financial statements and reports, and in the processing and analysis stage we used the empiric comparative analysis, in order to identify the resemblances and differences between the information published by the companies in the two countries subject to the study and the quantitative analysis. The data was processed using the SPSS- Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software.

Conclusions – After analyzing the collected data using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), we have seen significant differences in what concerns the reporting of intangible assets. The financial-accounting reports of the Spanish companies contain a vast amount of information referring to intangible capital and comply to a greater extent with the provisions of international norms in the financial reporting of intangible assets.

Limitations of the research – The limitations of the study mainly refer to the small dimension of the sample. After analyzing the financial statements of the Romanian companies quoted in the Bucharest Stock Exchange, we identified only 19 companies that apply the IAS/IFRS provisions. Also, the study does not present a dynamic analysis of the considered indicators.