The Ten Biggest Family Businesses in the U.S. Business Insurance lists them: Wal-Mart Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and most successful family business of all time. In 1962, founder Sam Walton took his knowledge of discount retailing and opened the first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Ark. It wasn't long before Sam expanded his business and opened up hundreds, then thousands of stores worldwide. After ...

Accounting for Nuts:  Blame a misalignment of incentives for the scandal at Diamond Foods.    The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins opines:  "Business people talk about "alignment of incentives." The lesson here may concern a peculiar misalignment of incentives."  He explains: Here's the executive summary: Diamond was a cooperative owned by California walnut growers until it became a publicly traded comp ...

Kravis: No Better Time than Now to Be Making Investments"    Private Equity International's James Taylor reports that at an invitation-only event in Monaco, the KKR co-founder said that low interest rates and a lack of capital offer 'enormous' opportunities for private equity: Kolhberg Kravis Roberts co-founder Henry Kravis struck a bullish tone in a speech in Monaco this week, dismissing talk of a "hard la ...

State Estate Tax Changes    The Wills, Trusts, and Estates Prof Blog reports that the federal estate tax exemption was indexed for 2012, increasing the $5 million exemption to $5.12 million. Many of the twenty-three states, including Washington, D.C., that impose state estate taxes have also made changes for 2012. A list of state specific changes to estate taxes for 2012 and beyond is below: To keep up with ...

Three Practice Management Trends for 2012  For the third year, the MGMA has published the State of Medical Practice in MGMA Connexion. It's an overview of issues and industry perspectives that will shape medical practice this year. The Association collected information from healthcare professionals about the ways in which EHRs increase revenue, as well as what affects your compensation and practice collecti ...

Book Review:  Inside the Multi-Generational Family Business Family Business Review recently ran an interesting book review, by Jane Hilburt-Davis, of M.T. Green's book Inside the Multi-Generational Family Business: 9 Symptoms of Generational Stack-Up and How to Cure Them.  Writes Hilburt-Davis: Green introduces a new conceptual framework, the syndrome of “generational stack-up,” defining it as “the converge ...

Practice Management Companies Look to ACOs for Growth  Physician practice management companies are forging ahead with expansion plans into new areas of hospital-based medicine as they position themselves to participate in accountable care organizations and other aspects of health system reform, reports Victoria Stagg Elliott at American Medical News. The companies are not buying primary care and other outpa ...

Small Firm Innovation Wins ABA Journal Most Popular Site in Legal Practice Management Category Small Firm Innovation, a blog dedicated to first person accounts of small firm success, won the ABA Journal’s Blawg100 competition for most popular blog in the Legal Practice Management (LPM) category.  The ABA announcement reports: In the wake of the financial crisis and a rapidly shifting legal landscape, Small ...

Congress Could Pass Online Sales Tax Legislation This Year Are you used to buying stuff on Amazon.com and not paying tax?   Lots of business owners are doing it too. And that might change.  At Accounting Today,  Roger Russell offers an update: The impact of the economic downturn has been felt particularly hard at the state level, with many states operating under a deficit. Since taxes based on income don’t ...

The Bankruptcy Files: A Big Start to 2012 At AM Law Daily, Brian Baxter reports: Signs that the economy is improving notwithstanding, the number and size of large corporate bankruptcies could double in 2012, according to a new Fitch Ratings report covered by CNNMoney. Fitch predicts that corporate bond defaults will hit 3 percent this year—more than double last year's 1.4 percent and 2010's 1.3 percent. Mid ...

Normalization of Income: Where Business Valuation Meets Forensic Accounting At the Legal Intelligencer blog, Terry Silver explains that since buyers and sellers often have differing ideas of a business' true fair market value, normalization is usually a required part of any M&A deal: The valuation of virtually every closely held business requires normalization adjustments. Although these adjustments may ...

M&A Will Likely Pick Up in New Year An Ernst & Young survey indicates longer term appetite for deals has increased, reports Anthony Noto at Mergers & Acquisitions. Private equity firms are more confident in the worldwide economy, suggesting an increase in M&A activity for the New Year, according to a report Ernst & Young released Wednesday. In the longer term, the appetite for M&A in ...

Study: Expert Witnesses Put Litigation at Risk with Wrong Benchmarks to Calculate Damages Marks Paneth & Shron reports that expert witnesses who rely on assumptions that overlook business reality often cause their testimony to be excluded on a Daubert challenge. Donald M. May, Ph.D., current director in the Litigation and Corporate Financial Advisory Group at Marks Paneth & Shron LLP, has published ...

Visualizing the Middle Market The Middle Market not only accounts for a third of private sector GDP and jobs, but over the last four years it’s been leading the way in terms of viability, resilience and growth, according to a new study from GE Capital. When it comes to economic development and employment growth, people tend to focus on either small local businesses or large multi-national corporations. But ...

Lessons from a Dying Business   Redbox has built a successful DVD kiosk business, but its days are numbered. Here's why that's not such a bad thing, report Karl Stark and Bill Stewart at Inc.com.  You’re probably familiar with Redbox, owner of those DVD-rental kiosks that you see parked outside of just about every neighborhood grocery store or pharmacy. Redbox is an excellent example of how to create growth ...

PwC Global Economic Crime Report: Cybercrime a Growing Threat  A new PwC report calls cybercrime one of the top four economic crimes – just after asset misappropriation, accounting fraud, and bribery/corruption, according to recent reporting in AccountingWeb.  What is cyber crime?  The PwC report, which you can read here, defines it this way: For our survey questionnaire, we defined cybercrime as: ‘an econo ...

A First: Law Firm Finds New Life, Not Death, in Bankruptcy  The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog Jacqueline Palank reports: A South Florida law firm recently used bankruptcy to do something no one in the legal industry has done before: sell itself to another firm. Companies across corporate America, from Blockbuster to General Motors, have sought court protection while they try to sell continuing businesses t ...

Tax Law Update Trusts and Estates Magazine's David Handler offers a summary of significant IRS updates on a handful of important laws: Internal Revenue Service extends filing and payment deadlines for estates of decedents dying in 2010 — In Notice 2011-76 (Notice), the IRS provided relief for the estates of decedents dying in 2010 (2010 estates). The filing deadline for the Form 706, federal estate and gene ...

Firehoses, Drinking Fountains, and Intrinsic Value CFA Magazine'sChristopher Wright recently spoke with four analysts about the challenges of identifying key share price drivers among the torrent of minutiae. The analysts cover a number of topics, and come from a variety of firms and industries.  Here’s J.B. Groh, CFA, senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson in Lake Oswego, Oregon: [It is largely] about th ...

IRS Begins Scheduling Tax Preparer Competency Tests The Internal Revenue Service is moving into the second phase of its tax preparer regulation initiative by beginning next week to schedule the first competency tests for tax preparers, reports Michel Cohn at Accounting Today.  The IRS said Tuesday it is launching the new competency tests for Registered Tax Return Preparers as part of a larger initiative to ...