The accounting firm Eisner Amper published their third annual survey, Concerns About Risks Confronting Boards. Based on the opinion of 193 corporate directors, the data show that excluding financial risk, 66% believe that reputational risks are the most concerning currently. The top three reputational risks of 2012 were quality (30%), ethics/integrity (24%), and “public perception” (16%). Security was #4 at 12%. These three named risks, along with innovation, safety, and sustainability (8%), comprise the six major sources of reputational risk according to research published by the Society in the 2010 book, Mission: Intangible.

Advisen, the insurance industry newsletter, headlined the story this way. St. Joe Getting Killed As Company Reveals SEC Is Probing Financial Reports. According to Advisen, the SEC has started a formal investigation of St. Joe and Fairholme Capital, the company's largest shareholder. Bruce Berkowitz, the founder of Fairholme, is also the Chairman of St. Joe (NYSE:JOE) which is the largest landowner in the state of Florida.

The Financial Times (July 6, McCrum) observes that that St. Joe was a pulp and paper company formed in the 1930s that became a property investor and then housebuilder. St Joe was forced to halt most of its property development in the wake of the housing bust. However the Watersound-based company has largely refused to write down the value of its real estate, on the basis that last year’s opening of the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport in the centre of St Joe’s forest land will spur commercial development.

St. Joe is no stranger to litigation and intrigue. Huygen's noted earlier this year that St. Joe distinguished itself by achieving the rare reputation ranking of zero among its peer group. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how St Joe, a US property investor, accounts for the value of its almost 600,000 acres of land in north-west Florida.

Turning to current metrics, St. Joe is demonstrating ongoing depressed reputation metrics according to the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index. Over the trailing twelve months, the company's ranking rose from the 1st to the 5th percentile rank among the 139 firms comprising the Real Estate Development sector. To be clear, only 132 firms outranked it reputationally which may explain why it has been underperforming its peer group by 45%. Uncertainty is in the air. The reputation vector has been up and down quite a bit lately measuring in this past week at 44%.





Its market value is in excess of 50% intangible while the mean of its peer group is less than 10%. It is therefore curious that shortseller David Einhorn feels that the shares are overvalued owing to the excessive book value of the real estate assets. Undervalued intangibles vs. overvalued tangibles; a classic question of ethics and innovation vs. accounting. Or optimist vs. short seller: a curious battle indeed.

Among the educational resources offered by the Society are the Mission:Intangible® Monthly Briefings. These one hour events, moderated by Mary Adams who chairs our Member News Committee, comprise about 45 minutes of prepared remarks backed up by presentation materials, and about 15 minutes of responses to questions submitted by listeners. Often, because of time constraints, there are questions leftover.

The 8 January 2010 Mission: Intangible Monthly Briefing comprising a robust panel of Society committee chairs evoked many questions. As promised, here are some more of the leftovers.

QUESTION TO JON LOW: You talked about how we shouldn't look to the accounting profession for support on intangibles yet you also call for comparability. If we don't get this from financial data, where will we find it? What will it look like?

ANSWER: Useful, comparable data supporting the growing economic importance of intangibles will most likely come from practitioners who perceive a financial benefit to themselves. Historically, this is where such innovations have come from as opposed to regulators or stolid, conservative and internally conflicted practitioner groups like the accountants. In the case of comparable data for intangibles we are already seeing growing interest in certain segments like reputation, brand and R&D as a proxy for innovation. Sustainability in its various manifestations is also gaining as a topic of interest.

From these basic roots, successive branches will grow as more factors become important to more industry segments. For instance, once M&A activity revives, data on post-merger integration success or failure – already a subject of considerable research – will probably also blossom.

It would be nice to think that some supra-national organization like the UN or OECD will take the lead, but they see no financial incentive or moral imperative to do so. Self-organized groups like WICI might have been able to lead had they adopted a more open-source approach, but they appear to be pursuing the secretive ‘let’s corner the market and see how much we can charge for our insights’ approach that has failed repeatedly in the past. Any group wedded to a particular technology or set of what they hope will be patented-able processes are similarly doomed because the market is simply too dynamic and unmanageable at this stage. Again, this is not a philosophical, political or doctrinal point of view, it is simply a reflection of natural phenomenon based on historical experience.

When comparable data emerge I believe they will look like the sort of ratios and benchmarks that managers use as a practical means of evaluating their performance. This is in contrast to the increasingly ambiguous or obfuscated metrics served up by GAAP or international accounting standards. The basis of intangibles importance to managers is their usefulness in evaluating and predicting performance, not in enabling arcane acts of financial sleight of hand. It is this usefulness that has prevented their oft-predicted demise and will support their ultimate adaptation.

Jon Low.
Predictiv

QUESTION TO NIGEL PAGE: You predicted a convergence of IP and IA/IC. I agree with you although in my experience, many folks in the IP space have a very strong prejudice that leads them to think (and often say) that intangibles outside of traditional IP (patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets) have limited value. How do we cross this chasm?

ANSWER: I suspect that the events of the coming few years will see this prejudice start to disappear. Most organisations are likely to refocus their priorities as they emerge from recession and, as they do so, they will begin to pay far greater attention to the whole range of intangible assets they own, as well as the potential for monetising these assets. At the same time, CIPOs (or equivalent) will increasingly realise that the best way to secure C-suite attention for their efforts will be to make sure that they incorporate IP into a broader reputation-based 'package'. CEOs will sit up and pay attention to IP if and when they can be made to understand that it is a cornerstone of their corporate reputation, and not a techy side-avenue that's best left to in-house counsel.

Nigel Page
Intellectual Asset Management Magazine