Intangible Business, the world's leading independent brand valuation consultancy, has published exclusive research revealing for the first time how the 100 biggest companies in the US accounted for acquisitions under SFAS 141 since its introduction in 2002.

The report, ‘SFAS 141: The First 5 Years', reveals that despite an estimated $1 billion spent on compliance and over five years of implementation, there has been no change in the transparency of reporting - the purpose of SFAS 141. The key findings from ‘SFAS 141: The First 5 Years', which includes a number of examples where the standard has not been properly applied, are:

• $1,033 billion spent on 212 acquisitions by the S&P 100 between 2002 - 2006
• $490 billion has been unaccounted for in goodwill (48%)
• $290 billion has been allocated to intangible assets (28%)
• $1 billion is estimated to have been spent in compliance with SFAS 141
• No improvement in the reporting after five years.

For example, in Walt Disney's $7.5 billion acquisition of Pixar, $5.6 billion or 75% of the purchase price was attributed to goodwill. In Google's $1.2 billion acquisition of YouTube, over 90% of the purchase price was attributed to goodwill. According to Elise Neils, Managing Director of Intangible Business, "This large amount of goodwill begs the question, what did the shareholders buy? Public companies spend enormous amounts of resources to comply with accounting standards such as SFAS 141 and we believe that shareholders deserve more transparency in financial reporting."

Neils continues, "SFAS 141 was not intended to allow underreporting of intangible assets while hiding excess purchase price in unexplained goodwill, yet it continues to go unnoticed. Regulators, financial standards authorities, accountants and all of us in the industry should accept this challenge and improve the quality and transparency of reporting and put an end to this new era of creative accounting."