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 ...

Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Survey Reports Top Challenges MGMA members were asked to identify top management challenges, and the results of the 2011 survey are in:    See what MGMA members had to say about the results in the July MGMA Connexion. Compare this year's results with previous years. Read the story behind the numbers and see how challenges are ranked by applicability. ...

  The 7 Biggest Financial Mistakes Businesses Make  Running a business should earn you an honorary degree given all you will learn, writes Brian Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Sageworks, over at Inc.    We live and we learn. In the time it’s taken me to build two companies, I have learned and more importantly, lived, these mistakes. I hope these pieces of advice can help both aspiring and existing entrepre ...

IT Guru Turns Out to Be Security Hole  Roger Kay reports at Forbes:  Small businesses have become a choice target for hackers, but by far the most common — and devastating — attacks on small businesses are inside jobs. This is the story of one such assault. The target (we’ll call him Peter) trusted his IT guy (Joe, for our purposes) because Joe worked magic.  Peter didn’t understand exactly what Joe was doi ...

CPA Exam Launched at International Test Sites Michael Cohn at Accounting Today reports: The U.S. CPA Exam was successfully administered at four international test sites: Japan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The American Institute of CPAs, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and Prometric said Monday that candidates took exams at the four locations abroad on Augus ...

Wild Market Quiets the Buzz for I.P.O.’s Evelyn M. Russli and Michael J. De La Merced at New York Times' Dealbook: As stocks swing violently, a chill is beginning to settle on the initial public offering market. A small number of companies have already retreated on their offering plans. WageWorks, an employee benefits provider, pushed its offering, originally scheduled for Friday, to next week and dropped i ...

Cut Down on Email, Increase Your Biz Dev So advise Bret Owens and Dan Markovitz at AccountingToday: Too many CPAs begin the day reading through their email inbox. No doubt, reputations depend on near instantaneous client service. But let's face it—if the only value you're providing for your client is rapid response, you'll eventually be replaced by someone in Mumbai, Shenzhen or some other time zone who can ...

S Corporation Rental Income Not Passive Except When It Is Peter J. Reilly reports at Forbes: Private Letter Ruling 201118011   A C corporation is a taxable entity.  Distributions that it makes to its shareholders are also, generally, taxable to them.  People who don’t want to pay tax twice on the same income will make an S election.  The shareholders are taxed on whatever the earnings are regardless of dist ...

Hey There, Bob Posen! Steven Zelin, aka "The Singing CPA," and Edith Orenstein, Accounting WEB blogger for Financial Executives International (FEI), have teamed up to create a music video celebrating the third anniversary of the Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC)Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting chaired by Robert C. (Bob) Pozen, senior financial lecturer at Harvard University. ...

Buying an Established Business The Wall Street Journal's "Running a Business" blog analyzes the benefits of buying vs. building: If you're interested in entrepreneurship, but lack ideas or time to create a new business, buying an established company may be a wise alternative. You'll inherit a working infrastructure complete with resources you'd otherwise have to secure on your own, such as equipment and emp ...

Shannon Pratt remembers what led him to BV and discusses industry growth in the '90s Neil Beatonshares his love of numbers, describes how Practice Aids help, and remembers the 'Wild West' days of early BV Rod Burkertdescribes difficulties of calculating DLOM and explains why professional specialization is critical Chris Mercer extols LinkedIn and explains how marketability discounts are linked to BV standar ...

Lari Masten discusses the importance of the Harmonic Mean metric when using the Market Approach Curtis Bernstein discusses testing assumptions in healthcare Karen Kaseno shares smart tips for managing your receivables Richard Gray discuss the importance of comparables when valuing partnership entities Jim Harrington discuss the importance of data sets Frank Rosillo discusses the importance of good report wr ...

Espen Roback (28:26) tells how he grew up in Norway, describes his work with the 'Ebay of Illiquid Securities,' and the way appraisers can provide value through consistency Brent Sloan (18:44) talks about his focus on Fair Value and why Financial Reporting most interested him because of his M&A background. Peter Agrapides (20:50) tells how NACVA offered him his first job, and shares thoughts for today's ...

Alphabet Soup AccountingToday's Danielle Lee writes that "A growing roster of professional designations fosters credential-mania," among CPAs, and devotes an article to surveying some of the most popular credentials today, including those from NACVA: The CVA. The National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts' CVA credential does require a CPA license, along with coursework and an exam. Establishe ...

Why Most Investors Don't Measure Returns Correctly At the NY Times Bucks: Making the Most of Your Money blog, Carl Richards opines: There’s an old saying that you should take a look at your checkbook and your calendar to see what you really value as opposed to what you say you value, because the calendar and the checkbook never lie. Dollars and cents are easy to count in the checkbook. Happiness, on the oth ...

Business-For-Sale Market Heats Up So writes Angus Loden at The Wall Street Journal blog In Charge: On the challenges of entrepreneurs managing their businesses. Sales of small businesses rose 8% in the second quarter over the same period last year, hitting the highest level since the closing months of 2008, with a growing number of smaller firms finding buyers, according to business-broker data. Getty Image ...

House lawmakers passed a bill today to overhaul the U.S. patent system for the first time in nearly 60 years, Nathan Koppel notes on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog: The House passed the America Invents Act on a 407 to 117 vote, WSJ reports.  The bill would change how the U.S. grants patents and award them to the party which is “first to file” an invention instead of the “first to invent” it. The change wo ...

David Wanetick, Managing Director at IncreMental Advantage, LLC, a valuation firm with expertise in valuing intangible assets and emerging technologies, based in Princeton, NJ,  opines at The Business Insider: Valuing a patent is complex and imperfect. Below we’ll go into some detail surrounding the methods used to determine a patent’s value. Each is applied under different circumstances, and impacted by ma ...

Who Is the Mystery Hamptons Moneybags? asks the New York Times DealBook. The hunt is on for the New York mogul with questionable cash management skills. Speculation bubbled on Wednesday after a receipt left hanging out of a Capital One ATM in East Hampton that displayed its owner’s remaining balance as $99,864,731.94 — yes, that would be $99 million and change — was posted on Dealbreaker. The receipt, which ...

The Accountable Care Fiasco That's what the Wall Street Journal calls the state of developing real-world guidelines for "the Accountable Care Organizations that are supposed to be the crown jewel of cost-saving reform." The theory for ACOs, as they're known, is that hospitals, primary-care doctors and specialists will work more efficiently in teams, like at the Mayo Clinic and other top U.S. hospitals. ACOs ...