Intangibles and gearing

The sentence on its own is not true - I can only guess that you are quoting it out of context. Certainly a company with a high proportion of (self-created) intangible assets is likely to have lower gearing than one that does not have intangible assets, because they will not have borrowed money to purchase them and the benefit of them will have gone to the shareholders. The statement would be true if it had said "intangible assets being a low proportion of total assets is likely to result in a companys financial gearing being higher than had the intangible assets been a high proportion of total assets".