Is Your Finance Team the Best it Can Be? Finance teams that excel tend to have similar qualities.  Here are five key characteristics, including strong leadership and effective use of resources.  Kerry Maruna charts a path to get you on the right track. To read the full article in CFO, click: 5 Signs Your Finance Team Rocks. ...

Fed Limits its Ability to Rescue Financial Firms The Federal Reserve has adopted restrictions on its ability to rescue failing financial companies.  Howard Schneider reports in this article that under the rules, the Fed can provide only broad-based assistance and cannot rescue individual firms. To read the full article in Reuters, click: New Fed Rule Limits its Crisis Bailout Powers. ...

Determining Whether Debt is Recourse or Nonrecourse When a partnership has a debt that is forgiven, its characterization as recourse or nonrecourse can make a big difference in its tax treatment, including being eligible to be excluded under Sec. 108, as this article explains.  Mark Cook, partner with SingerLewak LLP, discusses how Sec. 752 should be interpreted under CCA 201525010. To read the full article ...

The Impact on Employed Physician Groups The CMS 2016 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System downwardly revised reimbursement for GI/endoscopy services and reduced by 0.77 percent the Physician Fee Schedule to all services because CMS failed to meet the one percent net reduction target for misvalued codes in 2016. In this article, the author discusses how ...

Why the Choice Between Prime and Treasury Rate Matters Many bankruptcy practitioners have focused on the recent decisions in Momentive[1] that forced secured creditors to refinance prepetition loans at below market interest rates.  Most of these practitioners’ publications focus on the courts’ findings and the potential implication on future matters.  However, three interesting questions are not addressed i ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission staff published a report of its review of the definition of “accredited investor”.  Congress directed the SEC to review the definition every four years in Section 413(b)(2)(A) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the staff recently submitted their recommendations to the Commission. To download this report, click: Report on the Review of ...

Filing Tax Returns Early May Foil Identity Thieves People may be able to thwart crooks targeting their tax refunds by filing their 2015 tax returns as early as possible.  Russ Wiles for USA Today, explains how clients can get some of the supporting paperwork completed now so their returns can be filed as soon as the Internal Revenue Service starts accepting them. To read the full article in USA Today, click ...

How the Best Managers Practice Attentiveness Attentiveness is a common trait for managers who excel in the workplace.  The best leaders treat employees as individuals, make feedback a priority, and listen to what their staff has to say.  Sydney Finkelstein is the author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Manage the Flow of Talent from which this article was adapted. To read the full article in the Harv ...

With the New Year just around the corner, Mercer Capital is beginning their countdown a little early.  Here are this year’s 10 most popular posts from The Financial Reporting Blog.  Happy New Year 2016! To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: Financial Reporting Blog: Best of 2015. This article is republished from Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog.  It is reprin ...

The IRS is Challenging the Appropriateness of Discounts when Preparing a Valuation The current regulations, Revenue-Ruling 93-12, allow for discounts when valuing a Family Limited Partnership (FLP). The proposal is expected to potentially limit the allowed discount and consequently raise the taxable portion of the trust or estate structures. This article reviews the current requirements for FLPs, their hist ...

Secured Creditors Lost Almost $200 Million in Economic Value Due to the Imposition of Below Market Interest Rates Many bankruptcy practitioners have focused on the recent decisions in Momentive[1] that forced secured creditors to refinance prepetition loans at below market interest rates.  Most of these practitioners’ publications focus on the courts’ findings and the potential implication on future matters ...

Duff & Phelps has released its 2015 U.S. Goodwill Impairment Study.  This is prepared in partnership with the Financial Executives Research Foundation, analyzing the general and industry trends of goodwill impairment of over 8,700 U.S. publicly-traded companies. To download your complimentary copy, click: Goodwill Impairment Study 2015. ...

The 2014 Purchase Price Allocation Study by Houlihan Lokey is complete and available for you to download.  Included in this study is their review of public filings for merger and acquisition transactions, and shows how they analyzed the portion of purchase consideration allocated to tangible assets, intangible assets, and goodwill. To download your complimentary copy, click: 2014 Purchase Price Allocation S ...

Buyers do not offer premiums simply for the sake of gaining control, but rather, through exercising the prerogatives of control, those buyers expect to generate economic benefits.  Travis W. Hams, leads Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, looks at the Appraisal Foundation’s white paper on the subject of JAB Holdings’ acquisition of Keurig Green Mountain. To read more about the results of t ...

How to Account for Current or Proposed Legislation in the Business Valuation Engagement Oftentimes a valuation engagement presents a unique set of challenges for the appraiser. For instance, a particular engagement may be the first look at how companies in a particular industry operate. Other times, it may be a look at a company experiencing a downturn, and the appraiser must determine how to properly deter ...

Improving Organizational Well-Being Why have an employee hotline? What are the benefits, if any, of an employee hotline? In this article, Ray Dunkle shares his views and the results of implementation. While many forward-thinking organizations are increasingly implementing hotlines, the best practice of such a hotline is so new to most, that few know how to successfully do so. The remainder of this article p ...

The Present Value of Future Lost Profits, and the Time Value of Money Experts estimating the present value of a business’ future lost profits have much less direction from the courts than their counterparts estimating the present value of a person’s lost earning capacity. Professional literature has attempted to fill this gap providing many articles discussing the differing methods for analyzing lost profit ...

This article covers recent developments in employee benefits, examining, among other things, the Affordable Care Act's complicated reporting requirements, the proposed fiduciary responsibility rules, and updated procedures to correct employee plan failures.  Terry Richardson, principal, and Bryce Tholen, manager, both with PwC LLP in Dallas, take an in depth look at what’s involved.. To find out more on The ...

Financial Abuse of Seniors Could Grow as the Population Ages As more people enter their golden years, they become increasingly susceptible to financial fraud and financial elder abuse, especially if their mental faculties start to decline.  This article looks at the case of an 86 year old Seattle widow bilked out of much of her savings and how easily it can happen. To find out more about The New York Times ...

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 ...