Investors, suppliers, the taxman: everybody makes decisions on a company's balance sheet. Accounting like this is done for everything. Oil, cars, computers, cas

Investors, suppliers, the taxman: everybody makes decisions on a company's balance sheet. Accounting like this is done for everything. Oil, cars, computers, cash, bonds, buildings etc. No analyst has the resources to hunt down all these numbers and even if they would, it's often quite hard to decide what a 'fair' value for a given asset should be. A lot of that information probably isn't even public. It's also done for legal and tax reasons. If your assets lose value, you may run into insolvency (net assets < debt). Your balance sheet should reflect reality and the result can be that you have to shut down the business even though you have money in the bank.