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According to the Pittsburgh Business Times: The Dallas Cowboys are the NFL’s most valuable franchise, according to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of NFL teams. Forbes values the Cowboys at $1.5 billion, a 28 percent increase from the previous year. The Washington Redskins, who held the top spot for the past seven years, fell to No. 2, with only a 3 percent increase in value to $1.47 billion. The Cowboys overtook […]

In a recent California decision, Marriage of Fry, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision to accept the business valuation offered by a joint expert who estimated the owner’s excess earnings by examining the owner’s expenditures and lifestyle. The trial court found, and the appeals court confirmed, that the business owner had negligently or intentionally failed to keep business records, making it impossible to calculate the actual […]

Surprisingly, no one ever posted an entry on Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, to describe business valuation techniques. So I did! Like all Wiki entries, it is a work in progress. I invite others to review, edit and elaborate.

A recent California divorce decision, Marriage of Ackerman (2006), has been hailed by BVWire as the “Mandelbaum of reasonable compensation cases.” Yet, it is still unclear whether Ackerman will be as influential as Mandelbaum was on the issue of marketability discounts. Certainly, Ackerman is not as thorough and comprehensive in discussing the factors that a court should consider when determining the reasonable compensation of a manager/owner in the context of […]

Mercer Capital’s newsletter Value Matters recently published an article which points out a dilemma faced by valuation professionals in appraising businesses that have taken out life insurance to fund a buy-sell agreement. While the life insurance proceeds may be intended to satisfy the company’s liability to purchase the deceased shareholder’s stock, they might be viewed alternatively as a non-operating asset. Mercer suggests two options: (1) The life insurance proceeds may […]

In Haentjens, a 2004 decision of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the husband inherited a minority interest in a family business around the mid-point of his 20 year marriage. The family business was subequently sold prior to the parties’ separation. In the equitable distribution proceeding, the wife’s expert measured the increase in value of the husband’s non-marital business interest by subtracting the discounted value of the husband’s minority interest at the […]