A Bird’s-Eye View of Major
Intangible Asset Benchmarks

Within the last quarter century, intangible assets have emerged as the leading asset class. In the era of intangible, intellectual, and digital capital, a better understanding of the value and economics of intangible assets is vital for all major investment decisions.

For this purpose, our Managing Partner Dr. Christof Binder provides a satellite view of the economics of the major classes of intangible assets and the differences between them. To do this, he has analyzed the values of over 30,000 different intangible assets in corporate M&A transactions to understand their basic value-relevant characteristics.

Christof has published the findings in the renowned financial magazine Business Valuation Resources
in May 2022.

Customer relationships is the most frequent intangible asset in corporate acquisitions. Over three-quarters (77%) of all transactions include a customer portfolio that is separately valued.

The second most frequent intangible is trade names or brands. It occurs in 60% of all corporate transactions.

Developed product technology (excluding software and in-process research
and development, or IPR&D) is a rather rare intangible asset that occurs in 24% of all observed M&A
transactions.

Finally, software businesses (developed software for external use) are on average rather young and have
low revenues on average. In the corporate M&A market, acquisitions of software companies are
all the rage. Software selling businesses account for 26% of all acquisitions.

Have a look at the full article here.