LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE DEGREE OF INTANGIBILITY OF THE LARGEST BANKS IN BRAZIL

Abstract

In light of Institutional Theory, we observed the behavior of the degree of intangibility of the largest banks listed on the Brazilian stock exchange (BM&FBovespa) in the period 2007-2010 in order to assess the impact of the introduction of mandatory disclosure of intangible assets in accounting statements associated with the convergence on International Financial Reporting Standards. The study was qualitative and based on an initial sample of the top 50 banks (by equity) on the ranking of "Exame Melhores e Maiores 2010" (list of the top 1,000 firms in Brazil). We found that (i) the explanatory notes were the accounting document most commonly used for the presentation or decomposition of intangibles, (ii) the most representative types of intangible assets were "expenditure on acquisition and software development", "software and systems" and "acquisition of payrolls" with regard to frequency, and "goodwill" and "acquisition of payrolls" with regard to average volume of investment; (iii) the predominant classification of intangible assets was "infrastructure assets", (iv) the degree of intangibility decreased over the study period, and (v) no symmetry was observed between variations in the index of investments in intangible assets and market value.