IRS Revenue Ruling 59-60 is an essential building block of modern appraisal practice. It identifies “the condition and outlook of the specific industry” as one of the factors to consider when valuing a private business. But how do investors measure industry risk and how does it fit in the valuation paradigm? Risk and Return Value is  Continue Reading »

Privately-held Maine business owners might need appraisals of their interests for many reasons, including: Small business loans, Strategic planning, Mergers, acquisitions and shareholder buy-ins (or buy-outs), Equitable distributions of marital estates, Minority shareholder disputes, Bankruptcy, and Gifts and estate planning. A business valuation is just a formality, isn’t it? Many Maine-based business owners only perceive formal  Continue Reading »

A financial expert witness builds on a solid foundation constructed by a reputable source to reach a reliable conclusion. At times, multiple sources are used to reach a conclusion, and these are the assumptions and sources underlying the expert’s opinion. However, in order to survive a Daubert challenge in federal court, an expert requires the  opportunity to  Continue Reading »

Many small businesses today have a significant amount of intellectual property as part of their value. Sometimes it can be difficult to actually place a value on this type of property. It can be hard to understand, as it’s often quite technical. Also, there are different types of intellectual property, and each asset is unique.  Continue Reading »

A Maine-based small business owner might assume that they will save money by doing all accounting and bookkeeping work themselves. Oftentimes, however, these business people realize that isn’t necessarily the case. These tasks are often complicated, and can take up quite a bit of time. A small business owner can find several advantages to outsourcing  Continue Reading »

Maine-based small businesses want brilliance and innovation from their employees while they are on the payroll, but they also want their employees to keep those qualities to themselves if they leave the company. Non-compete agreements attempt to that to control any damage that could occur when an employee leaves. With this type of an agreement,  Continue Reading »

There is a growing need for valuation services among small businesses. There is a variety of reasons why business owners need to know the value of businesses, business interests and intangible assets, including sales transactions, financing, taxation, financial reporting and litigation. It’s critical for these business owners to use an appraiser who follows professional standards and guidelines, so  Continue Reading »

Many small business owners dread traditional performance reviews. They can be enormously time-consuming, and usually require a lot of paperwork. Due to a variety of performance criterial and various numeric ranking systems, managers can spend hours and hours per year on the performance evaluation process. Additionally, employees themselves spend on average a week preparing for  Continue Reading »

Small businesses have to maintain payroll for their employees. This means that business owners cannot avoid collecting and maintaining personal information about their employees, both current and former. For long established business, it’s possible that there are boxes of old personnel files in storage somewhere. The data contained in those records makes the business and  Continue Reading »

Business owners can easily get so caught up in leading their organization that they lose sight of what’s going with other employees. Sometimes there is frustration and dysfunction among lower level employees, but the owner only hears upbeat reports. Managers might be surprised to find out that some employees feel like the workplace is a  Continue Reading »