The Virginia State Society of CPAs held its 22nd annual Forensic and Valuation Conference. Harold Martin (Keiter) chaired the two-day conference and acknowledged the help of a task force in putting the event together. The sessions and speakers were top-notch, and some of the takeaways from the first day’s sessions may surprise you.

• There is “a ton” of BV work out there (“we’re turning business away”), but the trouble is finding talent—there’s a big shortage of qualified people, so firms need to ramp up recruiting;
• In BV, you can “never be wrong” because different (and opposing) approaches can be supported—the key is what is “right for you”;
• The “dirtiest little secret” in BV is that there is no real due diligence done on client-provided projections;
• Small businesses will often have unreported income, but it may be too costly to uncover it, so consider a high-level lifestyle analysis;
• The main sources of economic data (Mercer, BVR, Tagnify, and KeyValueData) all have “great information,” but they all need more endnotes and citations (and watch out for questions from opposing counsel on whether you have verified the data);
• Eyes are on the Trump legal case regarding manipulation of asset valuations—practitioners want to know who valued the FLPs at issue;
• There’s a certain amount of truth to the idea that, if enough people do something wrong, it becomes “generally accepted”;
• Some courts will not like or understand your DCF analysis, so just convert it to a CCF using a “blended” growth rate (conceptually, the DCF and CCF should result in the same value); and
• There’s a potential opportunity for valuation experts to specialize in reasonable compensation outside of business valuation (e.g., for tax cases).

There will be in-depth coverage in a future issue of Business Valuation Update .