FAACT Pellens Prize 2026
On June 12, 2026, the FAACT Pellens Prize 2026 was awarded as part of the graduation ceremony of the Faculty of Management and Economics at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. This prize, established by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Pellens through the foundation of the Bernhard Pellens Foundation at the end of 2019, recognizes outstanding master's theses and dissertations in the fields of controlling, accounting, auditing, taxation, or corporate finance that are characterized by high practical relevance in their problem definition and results. The prize is open to students of Ruhr-Universität Bochum and students of other universities, provided they were supervised by university professors who received their academic training at the Institute of Management (ifu).
The selection of the winning thesis is made – upon the recommendation of the Institute of Management (ifu) of Ruhr-Universität Bochum – by the board of the Alwin Reemtsma Foundation, which includes the Chancellor of Ruhr-Universität.
This year, Mr. Martin Schierhoff received the FAACT Pellens Prize for his outstanding master's thesis entitled "The Valuation Effect of the Capitalization of Intangible Assets: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Firms", which was supervised by Prof. Dr. Nils Crasselt, holder of the Chair of Controlling at the University of Wuppertal (Bergische Universität Wuppertal).
Following his master's degree at the University of Wuppertal (Master of Science in Finance, Auditing, Controlling, and Taxation) in October 2025, Mr. Schierhoff has been working as a consultant in the M&A department at Deloitte since November 2025.
The award ceremony was conducted by Mr. André Bedenbecker (WP/StB), Partner at Deloitte and Location Manager in Düsseldorf for Audit Industry, as well as National Audit Leader for the Industrial Products & Services sector.
The photo shows, from left to right: Prof. Dr. Heiko Müller, Mr. Martin Schierhoff, and Prof. Dr. Nils Crasselt, the thesis supervisor.
© ifu, Patir
The Valuation Effect of the Capitalization of Intangible Assets: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Firms
Intangible assets such as research and development, brands, software, or organizational know-how have gained considerable importance in recent decades. At the same time, financial reporting only partially reflects these values. In particular, under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US-GAAP), many internally generated intangible assets are not capitalized and therefore do not appear as assets on the balance sheet, but are immediately expensed. This creates an increasing discrepancy between the book values of companies and their market values.
Against this background, Mr. Schierhoff's master's thesis investigates the influence of both capitalized and expensed intangible investments on valuation metrics and stock returns of U.S. companies. The objective of the thesis is to analyze the extent to which capital markets incorporate information about intangible investments into their valuations and the role played by different forms of intangible assets.
The empirical analysis is based on an extensive panel dataset of 10,766 listed U.S. companies with a total of over 535,000 observations in the period from 1989 to 2025. To measure intangible investments, both expense-based metrics (research and development expenses as well as selling, general, and administrative expenses) and capitalized intangible assets such as goodwill and identifiable intangible assets are considered. Using regression analyses, the study examines how these variables relate to classic valuation metrics and stock returns. Several robustness analyses examine additional dimensions, such as different industries, time periods, and company sizes.
The results show that intangible investments play an important role in company valuation. In particular, research and development investments exhibit a significant positive relationship with valuation metrics and are interpreted by capital markets as an indicator of future growth opportunities, while other forms of intangible investments also contribute to explaining valuation differences between companies.
The thesis highlights that intangible assets play a central role in modern corporate valuations, but are concurrently incompletely reflected in financial reports due to existing accounting regulations. The findings therefore provide important insights for both investors and the scientific and regulatory discussion on the future design of accounting for intangible assets.