All kinds of news, findings, and rulings come out that might affect the work of financial consultants and appraisers every day. When can you know when a precedent is important or something you can ignore? Or, put another way: what information is most important to pay attention to? Rand Curtiss explains.
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The Richest and Most Comprehensive Comparables: IBA Data, 24/7. Log On Today. Business valuation has often been called an art, not a science. Revenue multiples are one key method; another is the use of comparables. Many valuators use both. KeyValueData offers NACVA members access to the IBA comparables, which are the richest and most comprehensive set of comparable available in the valuation world. Here’s an overview of the why comparables help—and what you’ll find in the IBA data set.
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Emily Chasan is on the spot with the latest news: U.S. and international accounting rule makers finally may be ready next month to resolve a debate over corporate lease accounting, that would bring $2 trillion worth of lease obligations onto corporate balance sheets. Members of the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board said Thursday they were ready to vote on a method for how new lease accounting rules will impact corporate earnings in June, which means a new draft of the rules could be finished by the end of this year. The lease…
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The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board found 123 audit deficiencies related to fair-value estimates and asset impairments in 2010, making asset valuation the most common audit problem. Market volatility always makes it tough to value assets fairly based on market prices. But that doesn’t mean management forecasts—and the assumptions and methodologies of financial modeling used in corporate pricing—couldn’t benefit from additional scrutiny. Emily Chasan reports at the Wall Street Journal’s CFO Report blog: The Big Number: 123 That’s the number of audit deficiencies related to asset-valuation problems found among clients of the Big Four accounting firms in 2010. Market volatility…
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Investopedia weighs in on the pros and cons of varying approaches: Business valuation is never straightforward – for any company. For startups with little or no revenue or profits and less-than-certain futures, the job of assigning a valuation is particularly tricky. For mature, publicly listed businesses with steady revenues and earnings, normally it’s a matter of valuing them as a multiple of their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), or based on other industry specific multiples. But it’s a lot harder to value a new venture that’s not publicly-listed and may be years away from sales. TUTORIAL: Valuing Employee Stock Options…
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Nerd’s Eye View, which provides commentary on financial planning news and developments, points out that a growing body of research shows our brains are not quite the logical, rational decision-making machines we think they are – or at least, wish they could be. Instead, our brains take shortcuts; we substitute easier questions for difficult ones, often without realizing it, and respond accordingly with our words and our actions. This can be especially problematic in the world of financial planning, where we often ask clients to make difficult decisions with limited information. As a result, questions like “what is…
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Business valuation (BV) reports frequently include information presented in the form of financial statements. The reporting requirements for such financial statements have drawn increased attention as a result of the issuance of Statement on Standards for Accounting and Review Services No. 19 (SSARS 19), Compilation and Review Engagements. The Journal of Accountancy reports: “When conforming the existing SSARSs Interpretations to SSARS 19, the Accounting and Review Services Committee decided to withdraw an interpretation related to financial information in BV reports. It has become evident, based on questions the AICPA has received, that the move sparked some confusion.” To resolve the issue,…
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Private Equity Manager reports that with regulators looking over their shoulders, some GPs are playing it safe by hiring third-party valuation advisors to check their numbers. However not all third-party opinions are equal, warns Cindy Ma, managing director at advisory-focused investment bank Houlihan Lokey. PE Manager’s Nicholas Donato talked with her recently. Here are excerpts: There was a feeling of unease in the industry when the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an informal inquiry into private equity portfolio valuations. Many wonder, how do I stay off regulators’ radar screen? The SEC has developed a number of analytical tools that now…
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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 private equity firms including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, The Carlyle Group and Apollo Global Management have agreed to contribute transaction and fund information to a database being developed by the Private Capital Research Institution (PCRI). The…
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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 morning right as Facebook trading began. One of Robak’s first points was “The people who bought in the secondary market came in right around $44. Those shares are locked for 180…
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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 Institute Conference in Chicago, Montier flagged up some of the key problems with the way financial institutions assess risk. These include the reliance on imprecise models and particularly the use of…
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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 investments.
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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.
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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 approaches to taking risk, building management strength, and investing in long-term business structure can radically affect final business value. Here’s how.
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What Data Valuators Need from Physician Practices—and Why! Physician practices are increasingly undergoing consolidation. Often that means being acquired by a hospital, and a prerequisite of being acquired is having a valuation performed by an independent, third-party valuator. Here’s information on the sort of data that valuators need (and that physician practices should be collecting today), an explanation of why valuators need that information, and how they use it.
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Blame Disaster on Bad Inputs. Black-Scholes Works. The last few years have given us plenty of reasons to hate financial models. Models that promised to increase efficiency and manage risk became substitutes for common sense and justifications for greed. The real estate bubble was of course justified by them. Yet people at hedge funds and trading firms, using models to mint money, remain passionate believers. Another supporter is George Szpiro, a mathematician turned writer who recently released a book called Pricing The Future, about the history of the Black-Scholes equation, the most famous model in finance and the one that launched…
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Increased Scrutiny for Private Equity Valuations The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has started an informal inquiry of private equity firms, asking for a broad range of documents on how the funds value assets and who invests in them, reports Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek. The agency’s Los Angeles office last year sent letters to several firms asking for details on fund investments and the valuation of assets, as well as communication with clients, according to the copy of a letter obtained by Bloomberg News. Firms were asked to produce the documents by the end of last year. Private equity firms have come…
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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 Walton died in 1992, his empire was passed on to his wife and children. Rob Walton succeeded his father as chairman of Wal-Mart, and his brother, John, served on a company committee that oversaw Wal-Mart’s…
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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 landing” in Asia, suggesting that the American consumer was regaining confidence and highlighting the opportunities for the industry in light of the problems in the banking sector. “There’s probably no better time than now to…
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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 convergence of several generations as owners, managers, employees, and shareholders” working together. He maintains that “stack-up”—the clash of generational values and perspectives—is a big problem in general and for family businesses specifically. The reasons, he writes are (a) we’re living longer, (b) we’re working to an older…