If you're been hoping to find a comprehensive source for private equity transactions and fund information, you may see a version of it as early as this fall.   Fund managers have joined limited partners and other industry players in supporting a global private equity database being developed by Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner.  Graham Winfrey at Private Equity Manager reports: A group of priva ...

Becker's ASC Review, a site that provides Practical Business, Legal, and Clinical Guidance for Ambulatory Surgery Centers, recently published an article on benchmarks that ASC administrators often neglect. These are important benchmarks not just for ASCs, but for any physician executives, healthcare practice managers, and the valuators and consultants they work and plan with. An excerpt: Chance Sherer, mana ...

In an article titled "Regulation 'Pushing Up Financial Firms' Costs" The Financial Times' chief regulation correspondent Brooke Masters  reports that extraterritorial regulations, rules that affect businesses outside the country that enacts them, are pushing up costs and driving banks, insurers and asset managers away from particular markets, a survey of global financial firms has found.   More than half th ...

You can't avoid paying taxes on assets you sell after a bankruptcy.  At least if you're a farmer.  Sally P. Schrieber at the Journal of Accountancy reports The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that farmers who sold farm assets during a bankruptcy reorganization under Chapter 12 of the Bankruptcy Code were liable for the full amount of the capital gains tax that resulted from the sale (Hall, Sup. Ct. Dkt. No. ...

If you're interested in keeping up on regulatory news in a day-to-day fashion, Financial Executives International (FEI) publishes a great news page on its own site and offers content for the FEI Financial Reporting Blog at AccountingWeb.  Both sites offer multiple monthly highlights from SEC, PCAOB, FASB, IASB, and other regulatory news, including reporting under Sarbanes-Oxley Sect 404. The FEI Financial R ...

The most highly anticipated IPO in history didn't put on much of a show. Facebook closed today within decimal points of its opening price of $38. Even so, the company's market cap is higher than McDonald's or Pepsico. Espen Robak is the president of Pluris Valuation Advisors, where he studies and values private companies trading on the secondary market. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic talked to him this morn ...

A relatively unexplored area of family business research is the role that an active, independent board of directors can play in perpetuating the family business from one generation to the next.  David Thayne Liebell reports at Trusts & Estates that a  recently published book, Building A Successful Family Business Board, seeks to close that research gap. In fact, according to the book’s authors, an activ ...

If you're still trying to figure out whether and how your practice should have a social media strategy, don't worry—lots of other folks are too.  This simple graphic should help you understand your choices:   It's really quite simple once you break it down.   . . . and we know a lot of you have spent time as expert witnesses, or doing litigation preparedness work for your clients. But are you ready to ...

One of the problems with how financial institutions assess risk is that they rely on imprecise models.  Financial News'  Shanny Basar reports that in fact, just a few days before JP Morgan announced its multi-billion dollar trading loss, James Montier,a member of the asset allocation team at fund manager GMO, gave a speech on The Flaws of Finance. In the speech, delivered on May 6 at the 65th Annual CFA Ins ...

Five Things to Watch For In Year-End Portfolio Company Fair Value Measurements Private equity fund managers—and their limited partners—cannot take fair value measurement for granted. In 2011, a number of new procedures and policies spawned by SFAS 157 (not Topic 820) have hardened into established routines. This checklist helps fund managers and consultants measure the fair value of portfolio company invest ...

Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things NPR's Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel have put together a fascinating podcast that examines the psychology of fraud. It often isn’t as easily explained as bad people doing bad things. Ethicists and psychologists have documented an unusually high number of people who start out, in their minds, doing the right thing. The story follows the case of Toby Grove ...

Add Value to Appraisals. Ask First: “Who’s the Most Important Reader?” Rand M. Curtiss explains how appraisals have the most value when consultants have customized and focused them for their most important intended audience. In some cases, that may be a prospective buyer. In other cases, it might be a client auditor—or even the IRS. That can make quite a bit of difference. Here’s why. ...

Estate of Natale B. Giustina v. Commissioner What happens when a case lands in the United States Tax Court where Form 706 found the fair market value of a business share at $12.6 million and the IRS estimates it’s worth $36 million? Find out, in Estate of Natale B. Giustina v. Commissioner! At issue was a 41 percent share in a closely held timber company. Meanwhile, in the Delaware Chancery Court, In re Ans ...

Top Ten Deal Killers! It’s an too familiar story line in the deal business. After months of hard work and, in many cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and expenses, the deal blows up. Most of the time it’s solely the fault of the participants—usually the seller—but sometimes external factors can add to the risk of deal failure. The really unfortunate thing about these bad outcomes is that ...

Owner Personality Strongly Affects Business Value. Learn How. As consultants work with business owners to plan successful exit options, it’s helpful to spend some time thinking about how the business was built. Paul Brown here describes how different owner personality types—described here as “Mountain Lions,” “Wolf Packs,” “Beavers,” or “Ants”—tend to build quite different sorts of businesses. Different app ...