Possessions of value, both real and financial. Real assets include land, buildings, or machinery owned. Financial assets include cash and securities, and credit extended to customers. The assets side of a company’s balance sheet includes both real and financial assets. Asset management is managing for others, for a fee, their portfolios of real or financial assets. Asset-stripping is selling off the assets of companies. Assets is also used in a metaphorical and usually favourable sense to describe things that cannot actually be owned, as in the phrase ‘a company’s best assets are the skill and loyalty of its employees’. See also current assets; intangible assets; liquid assets; natural assets; portfolio; risk-free asset; risk weighted assets; tangible assets.