The purpose of this thesis is to examine Royal Greenland´s accounting treatment of intangible assets. For most companies the intangible assets becomes a bigger and bigger part of the balance sheet, which is the case for Royal Greenland as well. Royal Greenland is not a listed company, and is owned completely by the Greenlandic State. Therefore Royal Greenland can choose presenting their financial statements according to the Danish law Årsregnskabsloven or according to the international accounting standards IFRS.
The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the following question:
I will investigate if the rules according to the Danish law Årsregnskabslov-en or the rules according to the international accounting standards IFRS presents the value of Royal Greenlands intangible assets for the users of Royal Greenland´s financial statement most fairly.
This thesis concludes that for Royal Greenland the main difference for the two standards is the treatment of goodwill and quotas. According to Årsregnskabsloven there will be annual depreciations to the value of goodwill and quotas, while according to IFRS there will only be annual impairment tests.
The main difference in the value of Royal Greenland´s intangible assets in the financial statement 2014/15 is the value of quotas. It is far from certain that the value of quotas will decrease over time. Therefore this thesis concludes that the international accounting standards IFRS provides the value of Royal Greenland´s intangible assets most fairly. The use of IFRS also requires Royal Greenland to provide the financial statement with information regarding impairment test, cash generating units, discount rate and estimated long term growth. This information can be very valuable for the users of the financial statement, which give an additional advantage for the use of IFRS standards.