New accounting rules behind explosion in UK asset base.

Stricter accounting requirements could lead to the UK’s commercial asset base growing by up to 33%, according to a new poll. The survey, which questioned 300 finance managers, found over 90% of UK companies are predicting larger asset registers – some doubling in size by 2005. One reason for the growth was that auditors had advised finance managers to split major assets into separate accounting elements to cater for different depreciation methods. It is now calculated that between now and 2005 there are likely to be an additional nine million assets on the registers of the UK’s top 5,000 companies. Mark Johnson, marketing manager at Britannia Software which carried out the survey, said: ‘Nine million is a conservative estimate and only takes into account capitalised items. ‘You must also take into consideration the potential explosion in non-capitalised or attractive items like low-cost IT equipment, mobile phones and software which many companies want to track and hold on a separate register.’