Category: Business Valuation

A fire, a flood, a burst sprinkler main, a supplier’s plant going down, or an equipment failure stops the business. Property insurance pays to rebuild the building and replace the machine. Business interruption coverage is supposed to pay for the...

Family business succession fails for predictable reasons, and most of them trace back to a number nobody established early enough. The son who ran the company for fifteen years believes the business grew because of him. His sisters, who have...

In an income approach valuation, two numbers determine the answer: the expected benefit stream and the rate used to convert it into present value. Owners and attorneys spend most of their attention on the first. Experienced reviewers spend most of...

Professional practices are valued more often than almost any other category of closely held business, because their ownership turns over predictably. Partners retire, associates buy in, practices merge, consolidators acquire, and marriages end. Each event needs a number. They are...

When a contract is breached, a trade secret is taken, a distributor is terminated improperly, or a business is disrupted by someone else’s conduct, the injured party has to prove not just that harm occurred but how much. Courts require...

Two specialized opinions appear repeatedly in transactions that involve conflicts, leverage, or fiduciary exposure. They are frequently confused, they answer entirely different questions, and both exist primarily to protect decision-makers who will later be asked to justify what they approved....

Most small business acquisitions in the United States are financed with an SBA-guaranteed loan, and most of those loans require an independent business valuation before closing. Buyers are often surprised by the requirement, the cost, and above all the timing,...

Real estate is often the largest single asset on a closely held company’s balance sheet, and it is frequently held outside the operating entity in a separate LLC owned by the same family. Which means it shows up in almost...

When a closely held company’s owners fall out, the dispute almost always resolves into a single financial question: what does the departing or excluded shareholder get paid? That question is governed by a different standard of value than most valuation...

An employee stock ownership plan is a qualified retirement plan that invests primarily in the stock of the sponsoring employer. For a closely held company, that creates a structural problem the plan sponsor cannot avoid: the plan’s principal asset has...