The Value Relevance and Reliability of Brand Assets Recognized by UK Firms

We examine the value relevance and reliability of brand assets recognized by 33 UK firms, and the stock price reaction to the announcement of brand capitalization. We find that brand assets are value relevant, i.e., associated with market values. However, the market capitalization rates of brands of firms with low contracting incentives—firms with no transactions that avoided the London Stock Exchange (LSE) rule requiring shareholder approval for acquisitions/disposals, and firms with industry-adjusted leverage below the sample median—are higher than those of firms with high contracting incentives. Thus there could be substantial differences in the extent of bias or error in brand valuations of firms with different levels of contracting incentives, i.e., brand asset measures might not be reliable. The stock price reaction during the 21 days surrounding the first announcement of brand recognition has a significantly positive association with the recognized brand amount. However, the brand coefficient is only a small fraction of the reaction that would be expected if markets did not impute any value to brands before firms recognized them. Few previous value-relevance studies have examined intangible assets recognized in financial statements, and none have examined the effects of contracting incentives on the reliability of intangible assets

The Association Between Investment Opportunity Set Proxies and Realized Growth

Realized growth can be viewed as a proxy for the unobservable investment opportunity set (IOS) of the firm, and provides a benchmark against which IOS proxy variables can be compared. Results from such a comparison indicate that many of the variables from earlier studies, including book-to-market measures and capital expenditure to assets ratios are consistently correlated with subsequently realized growth. However, R&D intensity and E/P ratios do not exhibit any consistent association with subsequent growth indicating that they may not be valid IOS proxies. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.

Audit and non-audit fees and capital market perceptions of auditor independence

This study provides evidence on whether auditor independence-in-appearance, proxied by earnings response coefficients, is related to the non-audit fee ratio (non-audit to total fees from a client) or client importance (total fees from a client as a percentage of the total revenues of the audit firm). The results from large samples over the period 2001-2006 show, contrary to popular belief and the findings of some prior studies, that there is no evidence of a relation between perceived auditor independence and the non-audit fee ratio. However, perceived auditor independence is negatively associated with client importance, consistent with the economic theory of auditing. Our paper adds to the literature by examining the relative importance of non-audit fee ratios and client importance as determinants of independence-in-appearance.Audit fees Non-audit fees Independence-in-appearance Earnings response coefficients Non-audit fee ratio Client importance