DRS 24
Active
Intangible assets in consolidated financial statements
Immaterielle Vermögensgegenstände im Konzernabschluss
1
Scope – a Shift From General Treatment to Group-Specific Focus
Genuinely narrower and deeper than its predecessor
Where DRS 12 (withdrawn, covered earlier) addressed intangible fixed assets generally, DRS 24 – part of the same 23 February 2016 coordinated release as DRS 22 and DRS 23 – focuses specifically on the CONSOLIDATION-specific dimension: identifying and measuring intangible assets that emerge or become separately recognisable ONLY as part of a business acquisition, building directly on §301's own capital consolidation mechanics established in the earlier HGB poster series.
2
Purchase Price Allocation – Identifying What §246 Alone Might Miss
Beyond the acquiree's own balance sheet
DRS 24 requires a genuine purchase price allocation exercise identifying intangible assets that may NEVER have appeared on the ACQUIRED company's own individual balance sheet – customer relationships, brand names, order backlogs, non-contractual customer lists, and similar items – which, though the acquiree itself may have been prohibited from capitalising internally-generated versions under §248(2)'s own exclusions (established in the very early HGB poster series), become SEPARATELY IDENTIFIABLE and recognisable once acquired as part of a business combination.
Recognition criteria DRS 24 elaborates
Separability from goodwill – can the asset genuinely be sold, transferred, or licensed independently? Contractual/legal basis – does the asset arise from contractual or other legal rights? Reliable measurability – can a defensible fair value genuinely be determined?
3
Worked Example – Recognising a Customer Relationship on Acquisition
An intangible asset that never existed on the acquiree's own books
A group acquires a company with a genuinely valuable, long-standing customer base – built up over decades through the acquired company's own internal marketing and relationship-building efforts, and therefore NEVER capitalised on its individual balance sheet under §248(2)'s own restrictions. An independent valuation attributes €1,200,000 of the total purchase price specifically to this customer relationship.
Under DRS 24's purchase price allocation guidance, the group recognises a SEPARATE €1,200,000 "customer relationships" intangible asset in the Konzernbilanz, distinct from goodwill – REDUCING the residual goodwill that would otherwise have absorbed this value, and subjecting the €1,200,000 to its OWN mandatory amortisation under §246(1) sentence 4/§309(1), rather than remaining buried within an undifferentiated goodwill figure.
4
Relationship to IFRS (IFRS 3)
Strong methodological convergence, differing amortisation destiny
DRS 24's purchase price allocation methodology closely parallels IFRS 3's own approach to identifying separately-recognisable intangible assets on acquisition – genuinely strong convergence in the IDENTIFICATION and INITIAL MEASUREMENT process. The recognised intangibles' own SUBSEQUENT treatment then diverges along the SAME familiar line: HGB requires ongoing amortisation for these intangibles too (useful life permitting), while IFRS applies impairment-only testing for indefinite-life intangibles specifically, though FINITE-life intangibles are amortised under both frameworks.