Focus is Key to Successful Valuation, Time Management, and Business Growth. Here’s How to Size Up a Project. Rand Curtiss shares insight on queries that allow appraisers to drill down quickly and determine the proper approach and charge for work. What’s the primary goal of the appraisal? Was the last historical year typical—and are there any major atypical facts or circumstances? Find out if the company is ...

New IBA Market Database Tools Empower Valuators to Provide More Concise and Accurate Results: Here’s How. The IBA Market Database includes close to 40,000 comparables, a valuation analyzer, and lots more. Paul French’s review, from the National Litigation Consultants’ Review (NLCR), explains the depth of data now available on the web, and explains how to leverage this exciting new tool. ...

Uncertain How to Assess the Legitimacy of Price Multiples? Here Are Some Tips! Rand Curtiss explains how to used reasoned judgment, statistical techniques, and comparative analysis to defensibly develop and support pricing multiples in an appraisal. ...

Valuation Experts Need to Be an Integral Part of Every Business Owners’ Initial Plan. Herbert Kalman explains why business owners need to begin thinking about an eventual exit from their very beginning plans. Here’s solid advice on the value and structure of buy-sell agreements, formal business planning, annual valuations, networking, and other planning essentials. ...

Added Ammunition Support Appraisal Assumptions Sherry Smith offers a look at data sources that can deepen and add credibility to valuations, M&A offers, and more. Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Survey, Sageworks, and a number of Secondary Markets for Private Companies (SecondMarket, Sharespost, and Triago) all offer illuminating information. ...

Is Brand Value Best Calculated by Deducting and Capitalizing Franchise and Management Fees?  Or by Weighing Brand Value as a Factor of Revenue?   A debate is swirling in the appraisal community regarding the value of intangibles, most notably brand affiliation, reports Patrick Maycock at HotelNewsNow.com.  While one party holds to a more traditional viewpoint that calculates such intangibles by deducting an ...

A Premium Multiple is Hard to Come By and Harder to Keep;  Owners Should Worry More About Improving Performance  Susan Nolen Foushee, Tim Koller, and Anand Mehta make the case in McKinsey Quarterly that executives considering company value often worry too much about their company's multiple (e.g., a P/E ratio, or EV/EBIDTA, etc.) instead of focusing on company growth.   It isn't that multiples aren't legiti ...

More Than Just Valuation: How to Seize Opportunities by Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone It’s a trap to define yourself as a valuator, rather than someone in the “problem-solving” business. Rand Curtiss explains why. ...

Redefining the Value of Appraisals, and Helping Clients Understand Paul R. Hyde discusses how appraisals come in a variety of configurations based on client needs. Here are tips on how to balance these conflicting demands, and how best to set the expectation for work in valuation. ...

Implications of the SEC IFRS Work Plan for Private and Public Issuers; How Slow Adoption May Rewrite GAAP   Grant Thornton Audit Services has published a 16-page report providing background and context on IFRS in the United States.   The report explores how market forces press the issue, cover SEC final report highlights and reaction to the report, summarizes how some companies are preparing for IFRS today, ...

Although 2013 Rates Are Still Unclear, Smart Planners Are Making These Moves Today Laura Sanders at the Wall Street Journal reports that the annual scramble to make smart tax moves before December 31 is proving especially vexing this year, since Congress still hasn’t settled 2013 tax rates on income, investments, large gifts, and estates. Deductions and other breaks are in doubt.  And some questions—such as ...

The Definition of Risk is Standard Deviation of Returns; Here’s What it Means, and What it Has to Do with “Total Beta” Is the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) superior as a valuation modeling tool to Total Beta? Peter J. Butler and Gary Schurman think not. Here’s why: ...

Calculating Discounts Accurately Depends a Lot on Company Specifics. Here’s What You Need to Know Dennis Bingham and KC Conrad provide a thorough look at options for calculating a discount for lack of marketability (DLOM), including restricted stock studies, pre-IPO studies, theoretical and option pricing models, discounted cash flow (DCF), Mandelbaum factors, and more. ...

Here’s How a Systematic Review of Risk Can Help Valuators Assign Appropriate Discounts and Premiums Industry risk can vary widely from company to company and industry to industry. Here are 20 questions valuation analysts can use to identify risk related to market segment; competitive position; political, environmental, and legal factors; pricing trends; profit margins, and more. ...

The FASB Lists 29 Different Intangible Asset Categories. Here’s What You Need to Know. Intangible assets have comprised an increasing proportion of the value of assets of most companies in the last decade, Gregory Marsh explains. Often a collection of intangible assets is accounted for as a single asset labeled “goodwill.” Here’s why that sometimes doesn’t make sense. ...

Disaster Area Declarations Have a Lot of Tax Implications.  Learn Specifics. Natural disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy, may provide certain tax opportunities and insurance recovery situations that business owners and individuals should be aware of.   Howard A. Lewis, MS, ABAR, AVA, and Former IRS Program Manager for Valuation Service offers insight: ...

Willamette Management Author Explains: What You Need to Know About DLOMs Aaron Rotkowski explains why it’s appropriate to apply a DLOM to a controlling ownership interest—and how to figure it—and why it doesn’t make sense to rely on restricted stock studies and pre-IPO studies to estimate the DLOM for that interest. Find out more. ...

IFRS News Offers Summary of Significant Developments in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)   Grant Thornton's IFRS team publishes a quarterly update on developments in the international accounting arena: ...

WhitServe Alleges that Mac OS X Infringes on a Patent it Holds for "Sequentially Opening and Displaying Files in a Directory."  Steve Musil at c:net  reports that WhitServe, which owns intellectual property but doesn't make any real products, is suing Apple over allegations that versions of the Mac OS X operating system infringe on a file viewer patent it holds: The complaint, filed today in U.S. District C ...

Federal Agency Identifies Valuation Risk Factors and Best Practices Could the Securities Exchange Commission’s informal inquiry regarding valuation be an opening salvo to allow more formal investigation, or even regulatory action? The McLean Group shares an in-depth analysis of the SEC’s findings. ...