On the Valuation of Small Businesses What is the impact of coronavirus on small businesses? What should valuation analysts consider in light of the stock market downfall when valuing a small business. The author shares his thoughts on the impact of coronavirus when valuing small businesses. The coronavirus pandemic is wrecking havoc on the global economy as we have seen last week with the stock market crash ...

Unicorn valuations are not directly comparable to public company valuations.  Travis Harms, leader of Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, looks at how the numbers could potentially be misleading. To read more about the results of this report in the Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: Unicorn Valuations: What’s Obvious Isn’t Real, and What’s Real Isn’t Obvious.  This article i ...

70 Percent of the Work Appraisers Did at Landsafe, Bank of America's Appraisal Division, Was Related to Soured Home Loans   Bank of America Corp.'s appraisal division LandSafe reduced about 5% of its work force, beginning Feb. 22, Bloomberg News, The Appraisal Institute, and Housing Wire reported.   LandSafe had more than 1,000 employees, the report said.  Hugh Son at Bloomberg explains a bit about the move ...

Watch Out, Wall Street!  The Federal Reserve, a Primary Banking Regulator, is Trying Harder to Spot Speculative Excesses Peter Eavis at The New York Times Dealbook reports: In a speech on Thursday, governor Jeremy C. Stein, who joined the Fed last year, focused on parts of the financial markets that show signs of overheating. He went into considerable detail, citing metrics that appear designed to spot bubb ...

Last Month’s Fiscal Cliff Legislation Included Lots of Tax Provisions. But Not Just for Individuals — There Are Tax-Saving Breaks for Businesses Too.  Here’s What You Need to Know. Bill Bischoff at The Wall Street Journal Small Business Blog reports that last month's fiscal cliff legislation included some important tax breaks for individuals; a longer version of his article appears at MarketWatch.  Here's t ...

"It's a Huge Case for the Patent-Law Community." On One Side: Google, Facebook, Intuit.  On the Other? IBM. "Because the patents are often unclear, there's no way to know whether an infringement claim by a competitor or a troll is legitimate until you've spent $8 million in litigation fees," said Mr. Schruers Ashby Jones in the Wall Street Journal  reports this morning that a federal appeals court in Washin ...

Few Business Owners Seem to Even Know How to Make a Good Guess at What Their Business is Worth.  NY Times Introduces Technology to Help—and Certified Advisers Provide Extra Value.  Mark Cohen, at The New York Times Small Business Guide, reports:  "At 53, Joe Ritz is old enough to remember a time when many of the classic cars that now pull into his specialized repair shop were new. “It’s one field where it p ...

Obama's New Vision: No Further Increases in Tax Rates; Instead Focus on Eliminating Loopholes and Deductions  And just last week all the pundits were saying any sort of serious budget deal was dead.   Now, The New York Times, CBS News, and Washington Post/Associated Press report that president Barack Obama said future deals with Congress on the U.S. budget could set aside the option of raising tax rates and ...

Details Found in IRS Explanation Issued Wednesday; $20,000 Figure Based on a Family of Four.   In a final regulation issued Wednesday, January 30, 2013, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.   Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the I ...

“You’re The Boss” Author Josh Patrick Suggests Business Owners Use Credentialed Advisers Who Work Only for You, Employing Intermediaries, Developing a Personal Financial Plan, More.  Josh Patrick is a founder and principal at Stage 2 Planning Partners, where he works with private business owners on creating personal and business value.  Recently he offered some recommendations about selling a business at th ...

Pay-for-Performance Provisions are a "Triumph of Theory Over Experience," Writes Bill Keller in "Carrots for Doctors."    "Pay for performance, or P4P in the jargon, is embraced by right and left. It has long been the favorite egghead prescription for our absurdly overpriced, underperforming health care system. The logic  . . .  If only it worked," writes former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, ...

Six Out of 10 Small-Business Owners Buy Business Benefits of Social Media; 41% Prefer LinkedIn; Only 3% Vouch for Twitter  Not that that stopped Twitter from getting a $9B valuation this last week.   Emily Maltby and Shira Ovide report that the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International recently surveyed 835 small business owners.  Here are the results. ...

Ahead of the new health-care law, small firms worry about crossing the crucial 50-person threshold — and about rising premium rates  Emily Maltby at the WSJ Law blog reports on increasing concerns about the forthcoming healthcare laws among small business owners.  This seems to be a prominent issue and concern among small business owners, and has been noted in most every major media outlet in recent weeks, ...

Investors Cool on Tech A survey of tech firms' valuations shows many companies are challenged.    Here's detail from various reporters: ...

Marvell Technology Group Sold Billions of Semiconductors Developed at Carnegie Mellon University  Jad Mouawad reports in the New York Times that Carnegie Mellon University said it was awarded $1.17 billion by a federal jury in Pittsburgh on Wednesday in a unanimous verdict that found the Marvell Technology Group had sold billions of semiconductors using technology developed at the university without a licen ...

There's good news and bad news.  Here's the low-down.   Dean Zerbe offers his take at Forbes on how the current deal will affect small-business owners: ...

Ambitious plans to overhaul the individual tax code, tackle corporate rates, revamp the Medicare program and consider changes in Social Security appear to have given way mainly to a tax increases for big earners Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times reports that "doing business in pieces" seems to be :the nature of what constitutes progress in such a sharply divided political world."  More: ...

Typical Household Taxes Go Up by $2,000, Says Non-Partisan Tax Policy Center More than a dozen tax cuts are set to expire Dec. 31 and a couple of new taxes are scheduled to start with the new year, Catherine Rampell at The New York Times reports.  Here's more: ...

10 Years After Implementation, NYT Cites Lawyer, Former SEC Official, PCAOB Oversight Member, and Editor Who See SOX as a Positive Development.  WSJ Sources Not So Sure.  IBD Claims SOX Has "Devastated" IPO Market.  The Times’ “Room for Debate” roundtable noted that last Sunday, July 24th, marked 10 years since the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law was enacted, after the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewher ...

Wealth Managers: Proceed with Caution When Setting Up an FLP Once an esoteric way for families to centralize management of assets, the Family Limited Partnership (FLP) is becoming extremely popular this year, writes the New York Times.  Why?  Because of the scheduled expiration of the $5.12 million gift tax exemption at the end of this year.   Still, setting up an FLP doesn’t make sense for all companies.  ...