The value people produce is an asset. After all, you don't own people, you buy their effort. A contract can be an asset. Usually the unrealized future value

The value people produce is an asset. After all, you don't own people, you buy their effort. A contract can be an asset. Usually the unrealized future value of the agreement has value should you need to make a deemed disposition (or have some other valuation event). It gets very obviously complicated and fuzzy though, which is where accountants make the big bucks. It's pretty rare that a company chooses to make a contract valuable, but it often comes up in bankruptcy proceedings. As an example of contracts having value, a few years ago I was involved in the acquisition of some media distribution assets, and one such asset was a transferable "MFN" contract with a major publisher. That was a very, very valuable asset.