The Brandfather

The Brandfather with Jeremy Sampson, MD of Brand Finance Africa, rails against the decision to flush yet more taxpayer funds down the flying toilet that is SAA. The allocation was mainly funded through reductions to the baselines of national departments and their public entities, and provincial & local government conditional grants. The largest haircuts came from the Police and Higher Education ministries which shifted R1.2bn and R1.1bn, respectively. Other large funds were shifted from the departments of Human Settlement (R345m), Water & Sanitation (R200m), and Science & Innovation (R87m) among others. And Michael Avery and Jeremey discuss the GIFT report, which shines a rather unflattering light on the accounting profession. Accounting for the value in intangible assets such as brand, intellectual property, training, social license to operate and the like has for some time now been cause for robust debate. Accountants find comfort in the historical cost convention and writing down intangibles to avoid the pitfalls of so called creative accounting. But the problem with that approach in an age where, for example, many midmarket fintech companies have substantial EBITDA and profitability, while having the bulk of their assets as intangibles, produces accounting nonsense and misleading investor information.