“Valuation report writing is a lot more challenging than we think,” says former IRS official Howard Lewis (International Society of Business Analysts and RiskGuidance Co. LLC). Speaking at the recent NYSSCPA Business Valuation Conference in New York City, he observed that valuation report writing and report review is an overlooked subject that deserves more attention. [...]
Marcus v. Quattrocchi, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19041 (Feb. 4, 2014) In an estate and trust case featuring a major real estate family, the plaintiff beneficiaries retained two experts to prove damages resulting from the alleged improper depletion of trust assets by way of an investment company in which the defendants had a stake. In [...]
At the recent ASA workshop in San Francisco for expert witnesses, James J. Mangraviti (SEAK Inc.) gave this piece of advice: “Stay in your sandbox.” Repeatedly, he cautioned participants in his two-day workshop, “How to Be a Successful and Effective Expert Witness,” not to testify outside their true area of expertise because the proposed testimony [...]
Last week our firm hosted a small group of clients and friends for lunch and to listen to the former head of IRS talk for an hour. He spoke about a lot of things, The Affordable Care Act, IRS staffing, budget issues, and also mentioned inversions. He said that the biggest threat to our tax [...]
Rumor had it that Apple would ask for about $2 billion in lost profits and reasonable royalty from Samsung for infringing five of Apple's patents having to do with features such as "slide-to-unlock," universal search, and automatic word correction. Trial observers recently got to hear Apple's damages expert Christopher A. Vellturo (Quantitative Economic Solutions LLC) [...]
Many business valuation cases work their way through the courts each year, but only some of them have a significant impact on the profession. Here are some important excerpts from those cases. 1. Excess earnings method is alive and well. Although the excess earnings method has its critics, it is in use and it stands [...]
Judge Laro is a U.S. Tax Court Judge and is the author of the seminal Mandelbaum decision. Here is what he had to say at a recent luncheon moderated by 2 valuation experts. Tax Court facts. The moderators asked Judge Laro to situate the Tax Court in the U.S. legal system. The judge obliged and [...]
The fate of law firms depends on their ability to recognize that mere growth is not the key to success. This is the conclusion of the “2014 Report on the State of the Legal Market” published by the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession (Georgetown University Law Center) and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor. [...]
With the economy improving, and businesses growing again, cash flow can become an issue. To grow your business, cash flow is important; however increasing cash flow is easier said than done. To find out what it takes to get financing in this current economic climate, I spoke with a local banker. Here’s what he had [...]
Working with companies who have been victims of fraud on a regular basis, the report provided by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners for 2014, hits the nail on the head. Here is a summary of their findings: Typical organization loses 5% of revenue each year to fraud. Median loss in their study was $145K. [...]
