Discover how far last year’s M&A buyers were willing to go above the publicly traded share value with their offers. View a list of the five highest premiums offered for M&A transactions announced in 2017. Read more >>

One of the most controversial ESOP cases, Brundle v. Wilmington Trust, has now entered the appeals court phase. In 2017, the district court found that the trustee had caused the plan to overpay by $29.8 million by failing to scrutinize the financial advisor’s obviously flawed valuation analysis and value conclusions. The trustee and valuator had strong ESOP credentials. Read more >>

I want to grow my business valuation practice and brand, but where do I start? Business Valuation Update had the pleasure of talking with Debby Sweeney and Mellanie Bartlett, co-owners of Sweeney & Bartlett Marketing Partners Inc. Sweeney and Bartlett work with a number of business valuation (BV) firms, as well as other professional service firms, including attorneys, CPAs, and professional associations, to help them build their corporate and individual brands. Read more >>

After the petitioners in a statutory appraisal action recently lost big, they undertook a multifaceted assault on the Delaware Court of Chancery’s decision to use the unaffected market price as the indicator of value. Their motion for reargument went nowhere. Read more >>

Discover the most important considerations when approaching a fairness opinion and read tips from business valuation experts and attorneys. Explore key factors including the legal framework, due diligence, normalization adjustments, and more. Read more >>

Leading members of the CPA/ABV community ask that you take a survey on the AICPA’s decision to open up the ABV credential to non-CPAs. The survey will be closed soon, so please make your voice heard on this important matter. Read more >>

Under the new requirements for fair value for financial reporting, valuation experts will be expected to have a certain amount of documentation in their work files. The new requirements are contained in the Mandatory Performance Framework (MPF) for the Certified in Entity and Intangibles Valuation (CEIV) credential. Regardless of whether you hold the CEIV credential or not, anyone doing fair value for financial reporting should comply with these new rules. Read more >>

For appraisers preparing to value a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) company, there is a range of industry-specific factors to navigate. Here are some of the special considerations for valuing an HVAC company. Read more >>

A number of prominent CPA/ABVs are urging the AICPA to reconsider a recent decision by its governing board to allow non-CPAs to be eligible for the Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) credential. Please take a survey and give your thoughts. Read more >>

Arkansas is one of the many states that differentiate between enterprise goodwill and personal goodwill. The former is marital property and divisible at divorce; the latter is not. A question that has come up in recent years is whether the owner of a nonprofessional business can claim personal goodwill whose value is excludable from the marital estate. Read more >>

An infographic highlighting 10 key economic factors useful in business valuation and other financial analyses. View metrics from 1Q 2018, including housing starts, consumer confidence, retail sales, services sector index, manufacturing sector index, and more. Read more >>

Discover a quick method to benchmark a private company’s approximate enterprise value, and access real valuation multiples based on thousands of sold businesses in major industry sectors. Download a free e-book. Read more >>

Healthcare is arguably the most highly regulated industry in the country. For any healthcare valuation, appraisers should have a reasonable understanding of regulations affecting healthcare providers and nonprofit organizations and a grasp of the current changes that Congress and state legislatures may enact. Excerpted from the Guide to Ancillary Healthcare Services Valuation, here are some special considerations to take into account when valuing home healthcare businesses. Read more >>

Case law matters. Every month, BVLaw analyzes the most noteworthy court decisions dealing with valuation and damages issues. Subscribers should check out digests of three recent divorce rulings different state courts issued. All the cases dealt with the issue of whether it was appropriate to discount the owner-spouse’s interest in a closely held business. Read more >>

The growing importance of fair value for financial reporting and the ongoing efforts to improve the quality in this area triggered a sell-out for the live ASA/USC 13th Annual Fair Value Conference. For those not able to attend in person or tune into the webcast, BVR’s own executive editor, Andy Dzamba, was there and shares his key takeaways from the event. Read more >>

To analyze and come up with a valuation, you need to perform due diligence to uncover the facts related to the intellectual property. In BVR’s Intellectual Property Valuation Case Law Compendium, expert Thomas Wolfrum (Wolfrum Family Law) suggests asking the following questions. Although the context of these questions were originally for a divorce engagement, many of these questions apply to other engagements where intellectual property (IP) is involved. Read more >>

In a developing ESOP case, the government recently suffered a setback when the court agreed with the trustee that portions of the damages testimony the government’s expert proposed failed to hold up under the Daubert reliability prong. Read more >>

View a list of essential reading for business appraisers preparing to value an S corporation, from valuation expert and former IRS territory manager, Michael Gregory. Read more >>

A recent Tennessee appeals court decision found that the trial court presiding over a drawn-out divorce had discretion to apply a marketability discount when it valued the owner-spouse’s interest in two companies in 2016. Read more >>