The growing importance of fair value for financial reporting and the ongoing efforts to improve the quality in this area of practice triggered a sell-out for the ASA/USC 13th Annual Fair Value Conference held May 10 in Los Angeles. For those not able to attend in person, BVR webcast the entire event, which Ray Rath (Globalview Advisors) and Professor Tom Ryan (USC Leventhal School of Accounting) co-organized. Here are just a few takeaways:

• So far, 100 individuals have earned the Certified in Entity and Intangibles Valuation (CEIV) credential with another 750 in the pipeline; a panel of large audit firms said they are ready to certify their staffs as soon as the inspection and quality control process is ironed out;
• This summer, the AICPA will issue a final version of its best practices framework for its new Certified in Valuation of Financial Instruments (CVFI) credential;
• The Federal Reserve’s QExit strategy will progressively lead to an increase in the cost of equity;
• An ASA task force on tax reform’s impact on business valuation will soon present a third in a series of webinars on its findings;
• Personal goodwill in a PTE could spell trouble for the firm’s ability to take the new tax law’s QBI deduction, which doesn’t apply if a firm’s principal asset is the “reputation or skill” of one or more people;
• A working draft of the AICPA accounting and valuation guide to private equity/venture capital is now available if you click here (comments are due August 15); the next guide is business combinations, to be issued in 2019;
• There are no fundamental changes to The Appraisal Foundation’s draft of its contingent consideration guidance; the next draft (or final) will be out this fall; and
• The levels of fair value audit deficiencies have improved, but there’s still room for improvement.

Thanks to KPMG for providing the facilities for this excellent event, and a detailed recap will be in the July issue of Business Valuation Update. Also, an archive of the webcast will soon be available from BVR.

Extra: BVWire now heads to New York City on May 21 for the annual business valuation conference hosted by the New York State Society of CPAs. There’s a good lineup of session topics, including purchase price allocations, Monte Carlo, cash-intensive businesses caught up in divorce, intellectual property, lost profits for shareholder disputes, noncontrolling interests in real estate holding companies, and more. For more details and to register, click here. We’d love to see you there, but, if you can’t make it in person, you can watch the webcast.