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This paper documents a strong violation of the law of one price surrounding a large rights issue.

If prices are right, the relation between the prices of shares and rights follows the outcome of a simple calculation.

In the case of Royal Imtech N.V. in 2014, prices deviated sharply and persistently from the theoretical prediction. Throughout the term of the rights, investors were buying shares at prices that were many times what they should have been given the price of the rights. Short-selling constraints in the form of high recall risk and lacking stock lending supply are the most likely explanation for the failure of arbitrage as a safeguard of market efficiency. Still, it remains remarkable that investors were buying large volumes of shares at highly inflated prices in the presence of a cheap, perfect substitute.

The mispricing was special not just because of its severity but also because unlike previously documented cases there was no fundamental risk and no material noise trader risk.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the required return of intangible assets for eight different business sectors by means of an empirical study of companies from the US Standard & Poor's 500 index. The resulting required return is subsequently compared with proxies for the required return on intangible assets used in practice, such as the weighted average cost of capital (WACC).

To determine the discount rate of the intangible assets the paper applies the weighted average return on assets method (weighted average return on assets (WARA) method). The paper finds the return on intangible assets (R_IA) by setting the WARA equal to the WACC and solves the equation for R_IA.

For all the identified sectors, the R_IA is higher than the WACC. It is also shown that this return is higher than the levered or unlevered cost of equity of the company as a whole. In six of the eight sectors, the levered cost of equity appears to be the best proxy for the required return on intangible assets.

The paper shows how the required return on intangible assets can be estimated. The required return is needed for discounted cash flow valuations of intangible assets.

This paper adjusts the WARA method applied by Smith and Parr. In contrast to Smith and Parr, the tax shield is included as a separate asset in the model. Consequently, the WACC before tax is used instead of the WACC after tax.