The Society's mission is to increase the visibility, transparency, and positive impact of intangible asset finance through education, the promulgation of standards, and advocacy. The Athena Alliance, a friend of the Society, specializes in advocacy. Its President, Ken Jarboe, provided us with the following:

As innovative companies struggle to raise funds, intellectual property and intangible assets are providing alternative ways of financing innovation. But greater awareness of them as an asset class is needed. Raising that awareness is the focus of a new report from Athena Alliance, Maximizing Intellectual Property and Intangible Assets: Case Studies in Intangible Asset Finance by Ian Ellis, a former U.S. Department of Commerce official specializing in intellectual property and international trade.

The report outlines increasing, but still nascent, means of financing innovation based on these assets in public, private and venture capital markets. As industry has invested capital in research and development to develop new technology and advance other creative activities, intellectual capital has become a valuable asset class, according to the paper. In response, firms specializing in intangible-based financing are springing up, using them to raise capital for the next round of innovation.

The paper details equity, equity-debt, debt, and sale-leaseback transactions, both private and public, that have helped companies raise capital, based on careful, rigorous analysis and conservative underwriting standards. For example, the author notes that in 2000, there were two public deals using royalty securitization, raising $145 million. In 2007-08, $3.3 billion was raised in 19 deals.

Unlike some of the exotic financial vehicles, however, the financial products discussed in this paper are some of the most basic financing mechanisms in business. The innovation is in recognizing the value of intangible assets for corporate finance. These new financial firms are using traditional financial techniques in new ways to help innovative companies.

But more should be done.

One important step would be developing sound, industry-wide, underwriting standards, according to the report. For example, Small Business Administration (SBA) rules permit its loans to be used for acquisition of intangible assets when buying on-going businesses. Rules are unclear on whether those assets can be used as collateral. The paper recommends that SBA work with commercial lenders to develop standards for using intangible assets as collateral.

The report builds on earlier Athena Alliance papers, notably Intangible Asset Monetization: The Promise and the Reality.

During the 6 February 2009 MISSION:INTANGIBLE Monthly Briefing, Fish & Richardson’s Cathy Reese, who chairs the Society’s IA Corporate Governance Committee, indicated that under Delaware Law, Directors and Officers had a Duty of Care to oversee the management of the business processes that help establish reputation. She noted that absent oversight systems, Members of the Board could be personally liable to shareholders for adverse events that impaired a company’s reputation.

Cathy’s warning of shareholder-driven exposure is just the beginning. Now companies are seeking restitution, too. According to the newspaper Deutsche Welle, after spending nearly 2.5 billion euros to cover legal bills and fines stemming from an international bribery scandal, Munich-based Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is seeking payments from its former leadership team. Siemens was investigated for paying 1.3 billion euros in kickbacks between 2003 and 2006 to potential buyers in 12 countries, including Italy, Greece, Russia and Nigeria. In Germany and in the United States, the company was found guilty of corruption and ordered to pay combined fines of just over a billion euros. After the 2006 investigation, Siemens then accused some of its former managers of having failed to stop illegal practices and wide-ranging bribery.

It gets more interesting. The Financial Times reports that some of Siemens’ investors have threatened to sue the company if it did not claim damages from its former managers.

The value of risk and reputation management at the board level should be painfully obvious. The consequences of failing to manage a firm’s business processes for ethics, sustainability, innovation, quality, safety, security, etc. – the drivers of reputation – can place officers and directors at great personal peril. Yes, it’s personal.

As he made his way here to Pittsburgh, home of the Intangible Asset Finance Society, to address a gathering of union leaders on Tuesday, US President Obama stopped by a General Motors plant in Ohio, where he said the government’s intervention in the automobile industry “may not have been popular,” but helped jumpstart the struggling sector. Let’s take a closer look at the sector from the Society’s perspective.

Let's first look at the reputation metrics from the Steel City Re IA (Corporate Reputation) Index? from 22 April when we last looked at this sector. The Index, which correlates with reputation surveys such as those published by Forbes, Fortune, and Harris Interactive, captures the financial implications of stakeholder behaviors and expectations of stakeholder behaviors as determined by corporate reputation. The Index is a good leading indicator of financial performance and returns on equity.

At that time, Ford (NYSE:F) showed a rising IA index and decreasing EWMA IA Index volatility with a final log magnitude of 2 while GM (NYSE:GM) showed opposite directional movements and a final volatility log magnitude of 3. From these data, we projected great financial results for the former, and ongoing dismal financial results for the latter.  Honda (NYSE:HMC) was our highest ranked automotive firm on 22 April.

Let’s see how those financial projections panned out as demonstrated in these graphs from BigCharts.com.



Since April, Ford has returned nearly 100% on equity; GM has lost nearly 65%, and Honda (which had returned 45% for the year until 22 April) still had some firepower left and continued to move upwards, but underperformed the S&P500 for this period.



If we take the long view of a 2-year return, Honda just barely beats Ford but is in negative territory; both outshine the S&P500 which is about 30% off from the 2007 peak, and GM is, well, "underperforming."

Let's wrap this up with an homage to reputation management. Kudos to Ford for demonstrating the power of reputation mangement, and its ability to create value on the basis of expectations of further great things to come. This type of financial result is exactly what the Society seeks to promote. And kudos to Honda for demonstrating the power of a superior reputation to forge resilience. This type of financial resilience is exactly what the Society hopes will motivate companies to exercise best practices in the management of their intangible assets.

Financial players are salivating over opportunities in the Food Products sector following Kraft Foods’ (NYSE:KFT) unsolicited $16 billion for Cadbury PLC (NYSE:CBY). According to Kraft’s CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, "We are eager to build upon Cadbury's iconic brands and strong British heritage through increased investment and innovation." Sounds to us like a reputation (brand) and intangible asset (innovation) opportunity.

So now that the sector is in play, we thought we’d look back over the past year and see how our predictions for value creation panned out. After all, when mergers and acquisitions are all the rage, if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

Our last look at the Food Products sector was April 14 and was motivated by the sudden decline in the reputation standing of the HJ Heinz Company (NYSE:HNZ) as measured by the Steel City Re IA (Corporate Reputation) Index. The Index, which correlates with reputation surveys such as those published by Forbes, Fortune, and Harris Interactive, captures the financial implications of stakeholder behaviors and expectations of stakeholder behaviors as determined by corporate reputation. The Index is a good leading indicator of financial performance and returns on equity.

Six months ago, the top dozen ranked companies in the Food Products sector, according to the Index, included Heinz and Cadbury. Kraft was number 17. Here is our recap of the baker’s dozen with market value as of the close of the markets Friday 4 September before Kraft's announcement.



Heinz, a company that was highly ranked in March 2009 but caught our attention because of a sudden drop in its reputation standing, underperformed the balance of the baker's dozen over the full year with a disappointing -24.5% ROE. Kraft, which lost only 11% over the year, outperformed Cadbury which lost 16.5%.  Firms that had a higher reputation ranking in March 09 slightly outperformed their peers. The correlation between rank and six month return was 16%. The top 12 firms, in a demonstration of reputation resilience, outperformed both the S&P Index and the Food Sector index with a loss, as a group, of less than 1%.

One other reputation note. Kellogg and Cadbury, both firms with strong reputation rankings and exceedingly strong brands, reported quality issues related to melamine and salmonella. We know that the impairment of reputation-linked assets such as quality have brought down companies from all sectors. We wonder, for the record, if business process challenges were responsible for making Cadbury an appealing target?

Note added after original posting:

Comments received after posting from readers of MISSION:INTANGIBLE focused on the relatively short window in which we reported economic results. The readers rightly pointed out that the Food Products sector is a long-term business. Tastes may evolve over time, but the business processes associated with delivering tens of millions of safe, quality meals reliably and repeatedly demand eternal vigilance. Consistency is the watchword, and therefore long-term financial results should be included in any discussion of reputation.

We agree. Below, the ten-year returns of the Baker’s Dozen listed above less Campbell’s soup (CPB) due to space limitations. Highest returns: JJSF; lowest returns shown KFT. The only major Food Products sector firm from our top 12 (sector rankings for reputation as of April, ’09) to underperform the S&P500 (10 yr equity return -20%) was CPB (not shown). Prices not adjusted for dividends.

Last Friday June 5 2009, Sprint Nextel Corp’s CEO Dan Hesse told analysts and reporters, "We're a very different company than we were 12 months ago. The Pre is the coming-out party for the new Sprint, to show off the new Sprint." The reputation metrics provided by Steel City Re’s IA (Corporate Reputation) Index, have yet to reflect this corporate change.

The Index, which correlates with reputation surveys such as those published by Forbes, Fortune, and Harris Interactive, captures the financial implications of stakeholder behaviors and expectations of stakeholder behaviors as determined by corporate reputation. The Index is a good leading indicator of financial performance and returns on equity.



The Steel City Re Index shows that over the last twelve months, Sprint's reputation has deteriorated from the 33rd percentile to the 12th percentile among the 34 companies that comprise the Wireless telecommunications services sector. The Company's EWMA IA volatility has generally been increasing and hovers around 4 log orders of magnitude. These are all features seen in companies that are inferior stewards of their intangible assets, and it is therefore not surprising that Spring has underperformed the median of its peers by 8.5%.

As for the hot play as of 10 June 2009, the firm with the top reputation ranking among Wireless telecommunications services sector entities is China Mobile Ltd. (ADS) (NYSE:CHL). For those of you who do not follow this company, we reproduce the following from their home page: "We are pleased to note that the Company ranked number 1 in the China Section of FinanceAsia's 2009 Asia's Best Companies poll in the four categories: Best Managed Company, Best Corporate Governance, Best Corporate Social Responsibility and Most Committed to a Strong Dividend Policy." With an ROE that is 0.5% above the median of this sector to date, this is one to watch.

The Society is pleased to announce the 28 May 2009 launch of the IP Finance Institute and to welcome the Institute into the Society’s global alliance. The Society also congratulates Pier Biga, managing partner of ICM Advisors, who is Executive Director.



The Intellectual Property Finance Institute is the first European research and competence centre focused on IP Economics & Finance. The Institute is a non-profit organization which promotes and develops know-how transfer, research initiatives and projects about the IP as an economic asset and its use in IP-based financing solutions.

The Institute was co-founded by the Innovation Studies Group of the Politecnico di Torino, a leading international technology university, and ICM Advisors, a leading international advisory and research firm specializing in intangible asset valuation and IP-based financing.

The past week, Intellectual Asset Management magazine, the official publication partner of the Society, has been hosting a debate on intangible asset valuation. As Joff Wild, editor of IAM magazine describes it,

One subject area that always seems to generate a large number of reader comments is valuation. Witness, for example, the fantastic thread tha developed following a post I wrote back in January entitled Intangible values collapse - the old 70% to 80% claim is now officially dead and buried. Among those taking part in that conversation - indeed the man who indirectly inspired it - was Nir Kossovsky, executive secretary of the Intangible Asset Finance Society and CEO of Steel City Re. Now Nir has written in to question some of the points made by Pat Sullivan and Alexander Wurzer in their IAM article on IP/intangible valuation myths, which I recently previewed on the blog.

The Intangible Asset Finance Society has weighed in on the debate along with our colleagues at the Athena Alliance, with classic language and arguments from the school of American Pragmatism that reflect the financial market principles we support. To follow the debate on the IAM site, click here. To read the comments of Ken Jarboe, President of the Athena Alliance on the Alliance blog, Intangible Economy, click here.

You may have heard about the spat between Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and its former CFO, Paul Liska. Briefly, Liska believes he was dismissed for blowing the whistle on inaccurate financial forecasts; Motorola's version is that he was dismissed for "serious misconduct and incompetence."

Our interest was piqued by a recent JP Morgan analysis that reported "this entire soap opera likely ends with little or no impact to Motorola." We are less sanguine for we see evidence of significant , albeit restorable, reputation impairment.

Liska was dismissed 29 January. He was officially fired 19 February according to an SEC filing. As shown below, between 2 and 9 February, Motorola's reputation as measured by the Steel City Re Intangible Asset Finance (corporate reputation) Index dropped precipitously from the 82nd percentile to the 23rd percentile among 93 companies in the Communications Equipment sector.


The data indicate a decreasing IA index, an increasing EWMA IA index volatility with an average log magnitude of 4, and a not unexpected economic underperformance of 3% below peers. In contrast, Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) the #1 ranked firm in this sector, shows a decreasing EWMA IA index volatility with an average log magnitude of 3, and an economic return that exceeds its peers by 41%

We believe Motorola's reputation issues are significant and now center about the core issue of ethics. This additional concern exacerbates pre-existing concerns about innovation which have dogged the company for some time. To stakeholders facing ambiguous facts as they now stand, ethical concerns place all executive pronouncements under a cloud. The discounting effect on share price, in our opinion, is similar to the discounting we saw years ago when Research in Motion was laboring under the uncertainty of intellectual property litigation.

It doesn't have to be this way. Operational transparency and some fine footwork by corporate communications should be able to undo the damage if indeed, as JP Morgan suggests, Motorola's case is the stronger of the two. The reward for success by our estimation, if you want to put a number to it, is up to $11B in restored market capitalization (F-test 10E-30, adj. R2 0.79). But as most companies are learning in these challenging times, in reality, reputation is priceless.

Dear Reader,

Beginning this week and with surprising regularity, the Society will post a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the intangible asset management implications of a current news story involving a publicly traded company. These analyses will draw on IA index data published by Steel City Re. Periodically, the Society will also post announcements to supplement the monthly news alerts, the quarterly newsletter, and the bimonthly publication in IAM magazine.

As always, the Society welcomes your comments and feedback.

Nir Kossovsky
Executive Secretary