In the last issue, we presented some takeaways from the first day of the AICPA & CIMA Forensic and Valuation Services (FVS) Conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. There were over 60 sessions to choose from over the three days, and here are some things we learned on the second day:

• The keynote speaker, a “focusologist,” reported that 70% of the workforce is disconnected and disengaged (“the way we’re working is not working”)—one major fix is to give more feedback to staff;
• The AICPA set up a university task force to raise awareness among students of the FVS profession;
• There is no need to use a normalized risk-free rate (for now at least) because we are now back to more normal conditions;
• For economic damages, the tricky part is segregating losses from the alleged bad act from losses resulting from other factors—a causation analysis is the key (the expert should never opine on causation, but it’s fine to discuss indicia of causation);
• In a litigation matter, if you get documents dumped on you at the last minute, ask for more time, but, if you don’t get it, footnote it and reserve the right to do a supplement to your report; and
• If a business owns its real estate, the cleanest way is to treat it as an excess asset with the business just renting at market prices.

We’ll have takeaways from the third day in the next issue, and there will be expanded coverage starting in the January issue of Business Valuation Update.

Next year’s FVS conference will be in Dallas at the Hyatt Regency Oct. 28-30, 2024.