Private Equity’s Fast and Furious Entry into Healthcare (Part III of III) The third of this three-part series examines why private equity and venture capital firms are targeting the healthcare industry and the issues that they encounter managing their healthcare portfolio. Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms are attracted by the potential for growth that exists in the healthcare industry; how ...

In Mercer Capital’s most recent issue of Portfolio Valuation: Private Equity and Venture Capital Marks and Trends, they provide a brief digest and commentary of some of the most relevant market trends influencing the fair value of private equity and venture capital portfolio investments.  Key highlights are covered in their Third Quarter 2017 newsletter. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financia ...

This week, Travis Harms, Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group lead, features two stories and one study, each of which highlights the need to analyze venture transactions in their entirety, rather than focusing solely on price. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: Accountability, Rights, and Discipline in Early-Stage Companies. This article is republis ...

In our most recent issue of Portfolio Valuation: Private Equity and Venture Capital Marks and Trends, we provide a brief digest and commentary of some of the most relevant market trends influencing the fair value of private equity and venture capital portfolio investments.  In this blog, there are key highlights covered in our Second Quarter 2017 newsletter. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Fina ...

Market sentiment seems to oscillate between a preference for growth and a desire for profitability now.  Travis Harms, Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group lead, discusses the challenges of managing and investing in early-stage companies. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: If it was Easy, We’d all be Rich. This article is republished from Mercer Cap ...

After a steady build-up since the end of the credit crisis, 2016 is going to be marked as the year when the venture capital industry lost momentum, although not for a lack of investors.  Money has continued to pour in as riskier VC investments are still expected to outperform listed alternatives.  Madeleine Harrigan, senior financial analyst with Mercer Capital, explains what is happening. To read the full ...

Startup Ecosystems Allow Entrepreneurs to Help One Another Almost all of the more than 360 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. have an ecosystem in which startups support one another through funding and other types of assistance, according to the Kauffman Foundation.  These networks may help entrepreneurs receive psychological and social support as well as monetary backing.  John F. Wasik of The New York T ...

The International Private Equity and Venture Capital Valuation (IPEV) Guidelines were developed in 2005 to set out recommendations on best practices in the valuation of private equity investments.  Karolina Calhoun, senior financial analyst with Mercer Capital, looks at the draft amendments to the existing guidelines published in October 2015. To read more about the results of this report in the Mercer Capi ...

Issues in Hedge Fund Valuations The proliferation of hedge funds presents an opportunity for valuation analysts. In this article, the author provides an overview of the hedge fund industry, compares the manner in which hedge funds operate vis-à-vis private equity and venture capital, and outlines the opportunities and challenges for valuation analysts interested in serving this market sector. ...

So, You Want to Become a Venture Capitalist? In this article, Edward Mofrad shares his views on what it takes to become a successful venture capitalist. ...

Is there a disconnect between client expectations and advisory services? Valuation professionals are uniquely positioned to help clients identify opportunities and third parties that can take them to a proverbial next level. Business valuation is about more than just benchmarking and deriving a defensible conclusion of value, it should entail understanding the value and interplay of governance, risk, relati ...

Why VCs and Private Equity Pros are Sensitive to IRC 409A Valuations Rand Curtiss weighs in on why IRC 409A option-related valuations for small businesses do not solve real business problems for them. They set minimum exercise prices, asserts Curtiss—but that’s all they do. ...

Past Performance is No Longer a Viable Valuation Tactic: Learn to Anticipate Future Prospects with Data Mining, Proprietary Benchmark Techniques, and a Close Look at Both Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures.    Caleb Slabbert, writing at VentureCapital.org, which bills itself as a non-profit organization that has been "a premier resource for both entrepreneurs seeking funding and for investors who want to he ...

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

UConnect v. Facebook Showed How 409A Valuations Can Destroy Value. Here’s What Shareholders and VCs Need to Know—and Some Ideas About How to Better the Situation. Lorenzo Carver previously explained how 409A valuations destroy value for shareholders receiving grants, and provided a case study of how this all played out in UConnect v. Facebook. In this final article in a three-part series, Carver presents us ...

The Winklevoss Twins Realized Too Late the Value They’d Agreed to for Their Common Shares of Facebook. Here’s How it Played Out. Last week Lorenzo Carver introduced the topic of how 409A valuations destroy value for some shareholders.  Today’s piece is a case study in how a wide disparity in value estimates largely created by the 409A process played out in the UConnect v. Facebook lawsuit. ...

Why Built-up Volatility Rates Produce Better Value Indications In part one of a three-part series, Lorenzo Carver explains how the interaction between auditors and valuation professionals during dual-purpose 409A valuations of common stock and employee stock options destroys value for hundreds of thousands of employees receiving stock options every year by granting options at strike prices that are above th ...

Investopedia weighs in on the pros and cons of varying approaches: Business valuation is never straightforward - for any company. For startups with little or no revenue or profits and less-than-certain futures, the job of assigning a valuation is particularly tricky. For mature, publicly listed businesses with steady revenues and earnings, normally it's a matter of valuing them as a multiple of their earnin ...

In Silicon Valley, a Culture Clash Sullies a Romance Steven M. Davidoff reports on the New York Times DealBook blog:   Private equity has broken venture capital’s heart, and V.C. is not taking it well.   The romance ended when Silver Lake, the private equity firm, agreed to sell Skype to Microsoft. Silver Lake is estimated to be pocketing more than $4 billion from the sale.   This would normally be a joyous ...