• Mergers and Acquisitions/Exit Planning - QuickRead Top Story

    The Ticking Clock

    The Future of Main Street Business Succession In 2001, veteran investment banker, Peter Christman, first identified the need for a holistic approach to preparing owners of midmarket businesses for sale and/or exit. He set about writing a book to address this. At the time, the first Baby Boomer was 56 years of age. Those Baby Boomers are now not so young. In this article, the author shares his impression of the challenges Main Street business owners and business succession advisors face developing a plan and executing the exit plan. A Brief History Depending on how you mark the start date,…

  • QuickRead Top Story - Valuation/Appraisal

    Reasonableness of Shareholder/Executive Compensation

    Challenging and Defending Compensation and Use of the Independent Investor Test C corporations and S corporations should pay shareholder/executive compensation based on the fair market value of the executive services rendered—or risk being audited and possibly penalized by the Internal Revenue Service. Forensic analysts can help companies determine reasonable shareholder/executive compensation using free or fee-based compensation data, with consideration of statutory authority and judicial precedent. This discussion (1) summarizes the federal income tax statutes and judicial precedents related to shareholder/executive compensation, (2) provides a list of frequently relied upon executive compensation data sources, and (3) reviews important issues presented in…

  • QuickRead Top Story - Valuation/Appraisal

    One Explanation for the Variance in the Price/EBITDA Multiple

    Given a Fixed Amount of EBITDA After reading Steve Egna’s article in the April 12, 2017 issue of QuickRead Buzz, in which he suggests that a larger multiple of EBITDA is realized as the number of employees of the selling business increases, the author considered testing whether that same approach could help explain why a certain amount of EBITDA would generate multiple amounts of MVIC. In this article, the author shares his findings.