For a number of decades now, at the instigation of Anglo-Saxon standard setters, the basis of the traditional accounting model, or the financial conventions which determine how a company’s wealth and income is measured, have been increasingly called into question. This wide-reaching movement,...

The debate over a common European energy policy, its necessity and its establishment has been going on for a number of decades. The discussions have been recently brought back into the spotlight by the evolution of energy market fundamentals and the taking into account of environmental...

This paper investigates which comparables selection method generates the mostprecise forecasts when valuing European companies with the enterprise value to EBIT multiple. We also consider the USA as a reference point. It turns out that selecting comparable companies with similar return on assets...

Numerous empirical studies provide evidence on the value relevance of capitalizing expenditures on intangibles such as research & development (Lev and Sougiannis 1996, Hand 2003). However, accounting standards in many countries, such as the U.S. or Germany, prohibit capitalizing these. In this...

The European insurance industry is currently undergoing a substantial change in financial reporting requirements. Beginning in 2005, compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been required in the European Union. Substantial sections of the IFRS - leading to a...

Standard equity valuation approaches (i.e., DDM, RIM, and DCF) are derivedunder the assumption of ideal conditions, such as infinite payoffs and cleansurplus accounting. Since these conditions are hardly ever met, we provideextensions of the standard approaches based on the fundamental principle...

Performance measures shall enhance the performance of companies by directing the attentionof decision makers towards the achievement of organizational goals. Therefore, goalcongruence is regarded in literature as a major factor in the quality of such measures. Asreality is affected by many...