Do business valuation standards have any value in court? Our legal editor shares insights gleaned from several cases on just this topic. Read more >>

Lately, there have been discussions online about the impact of ASC 840 and 842 (rules on accounting for leases) on valuations of businesses. Let's take a look at how these changes pan out. Read more >>

The AICPA has issued a bridging document to move a VS100 valuation engagement to an IVS-compliant valuation engagement. Learn more about what this might mean for the BVLS field. Read more >>

In this surmised summary judgment as to damages, a New York trial court awarded damages to the plaintiff in a breach of contract suit. The determination of damages was made without a trial but “on paper.” Additionally, the court used a subsequent sale of the stock to determine the damages and opine that the company was “worthless.” Read more >>

Well a firestorm hit the legal world of special purpose acquisition corporations (SPACs) when the Delaware Court of Chancery (Lori W. Will, VC) denied motions to dismiss various allegations of some of the public stockholders of Churchill Capital Corp. Read more >>

Two new cases exemplify the need to know the law in the jurisdiction of your case in a marital dissolution (divorce). Read more >>

The BVR legal team often receives inquiries about our method and “rules” behind our case law research and digesting process, so we're sharing this important background information with you. Read more >>

The Chief Counsel office (IRS) recently released a memorandum, which comes to two primary conclusions. First, under the fair market value standard, the hypothetical willing buyer and willing seller of a company would consider a pending merger when valuing stock for gift tax purposes. Second, the retained interest is not a qualified annuity interest under § 2702 of the Internal Revenue Code (Code) because the donor used an outdated appraisal that did not take into account all the facts and circumstances of a pending merger. Read more >>

It appears that the courts are rejecting Daubert standard and FRE 702 challenges more frequently. Take a deep dive into potential reasons for this with our legal editor, Jim Alerding. Read more >>

Lately, there has been chatter about the demand for experienced business valuation forensic litigation specialists exceeding the supply of such people. Read more >>

Estate planning can be a risky business. Some of those risks were on full display in a recent tax case, Nelson v. Comm'r. Read more >>

Recently, a district court in Hawaii has ruled in favor of the trustees and sponsors in a case that is getting a lot of attention, Walsh v. Bowers, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177184. The Department of Labor sued the defendants, which included two individual owners. read on to dive a little deeper into the details of this fascinating case! Read more >>

Recently a court in Arizona rejected the use of a calculation report, but an appellate court ruled it was wrong to do so and sent the case back to the lower court. The reasoning for this decision strikes at a broader question: is calculated value admissible in court? Read more >>

The courts in the past few years have been sprinkled with cases dealing with whether a discount for lack of control (DLOC) or marketability (DLOM) should be applied in the case of a shareholder buyout. Read more >>

The Department of Labor (DOL) has a long history of challenging transactions involving company owners selling some or all of their interests to an ESOP. The most common challenge is to the value the trustees approved for executing the sale of company stock held by owners to the ESOP. Read more >>

Hi, I am Jim Alerding, CPA/ABV. Many of you know me from my presentations and articles over the years. I have over 40 years of experience in business valuation and litigation services. I started in 1980 in the BV and testimony arenas. Since my first case was a valuation for a divorce case in which I then testified, I started in BV and Litigation Support at the same time. Read more >>

When Michael Jackson died, his image and likeness was besmirched and yet, once competent executors took charge, they were able to make a lot of money for the estate in the immediate post-death years. The issue was to what extent this subsequent development could factor into the image-and-likeness valuation. In explaining his high valuation, the IRS’ expert offered a theory of “foreseeable opportunities” that the U.S. Tax Court found unpersuasive. Read more >>

On March 19, Caesars Entertainment joined the long list of businesses that have filed lawsuits against their insurance companies for refusing to pay business interruption losses stemming from COVID-19-related government shutdowns of economies across the nation and world. Whether Caesars, which asserts that losses its various business entities incurred may exceed $2 billion, succeeds where a lot of other plaintiffs have failed will be worth monitoring. Read more >>

Although the U.S. Tax Court recently handed the Michael Jackson estate a decisive victory regarding the estate’s tax liability, the court did not side with the estate on tax affecting, an issue that has preoccupied valuators, many of whom are proponents of the practice, for a long time. Read more >>

In the long-running litigation between the estate of the late megastar Michael Jackson and the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Tax Court recently issued its opinion on the value of Jackson’s image and likeness, as well as the value of his interest in two music publishing assets. Overall, this much-anticipated decision is a major win for the Jackson estate. The court’s momentous decision includes an expansive analysis of the rivaling valuation testimony. Read more >>