Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil has taken a close look at Regions Financial’s balance sheet and he doesn’t like what he sees. In particular, he doesn’t like the $11.5 billion value that Regions assigns to goodwill, an intangible asset that companies often create to account for acquisitions. In theory, it captures the value of a business’ name, trademarks, customer relationships and so on. In practice, it sometimes bears little resemblance to reality. As Weil writes:

It all comes down to that pneumatic, intangible asset known as goodwill, which is about as valuable as the air in a paper sack. As of Sept. 30, according to Regions, the bank’s goodwill was worth $11.5 billion, slightly more than the quarter before. That’s about 59 percent of Regions’ book value, and $4.1 billion more than what the stock market says the entire company is worth.

Much of Regions’ goodwill comes from the 2006 acquisition of AmSouth Bancorp. Regions, based in Birmingham, Ala., is the No. 5 bank in St. Louis when ranked by deposits.