Business Valuation

Michael Goldman's Approach to Business Valuation:

A business valuation is an opinion of the market value of a business entity.  A comprehensive and robust valuation consists of many important elements:

• proven, scientific techniques that are both relevant and reliable
• analysis and understanding of the value drivers in place for the subject company and the industry in which it operates
• study of both the internal factors and external factors to determine how they impact the value drivers of the subject company
• market-driven evidence
• intuition and professional judgment sharpened by years of education, training, and experience

Business valuations combine the scientific methods of quantitative analysis with the artful evaluation of qualitative factors such as human and organizational behavior.  Numbers by themselves are meaningless; it takes an experienced eye to appraise the numbers in their proper context.

Value does not occur in a vacuum and is driven by many factors.  Internal factors that drive value can include the quality of management, the financial structure of the company, it's operational process, the attractiveness of it's products or services, vendor or customer concentration, and the quality of its systems.  External factors can include government policies, industry or economic conditions, the labor market, competition, technology, and demographics.

Historic performance and the business' value drivers both need to be evaluated by an experienced professional with an eye for what adds value to a business and what detracts from it.  Michael Goldman has consulted to many dozens of companies from start-ups to multi-billion dollar enterprises, from vibrant healthy companies at the peak of their performance to insolvent companies requiring restructuring or liquidation, in both good economies and bad.  He is an expert at identifying and quantifying what drives value.

Valuations in dispute settings such as divorce or shareholder oppression cases often require skills beyond those of a typical valuation expert.  A divorce case that Michael Goldman assisted in began as a valuation assignment, transformed into a fraud investigation when it was found the business owner had had a number of off-books transactions, and ultimately became a dissipation case when the owner intentionally bankrupted the company in a scorched-earth tactic.  Similarly a shareholder oppression case that began as a forensic analysis ended up settling based on the merits of Michael Goldman's valuation detailing how much value one shareholder had withheld from the other.  Cases like these require an expert able to testify in many areas such as business valuation, forensic accounting, business management, insolvency, and fraud.

Every case is not the same, and valuation work cannot be forced into templates.  Two very successful law practices could source their customers in very different ways - one though firm reputation built by advertising and having many attorneys winning cases, and the other through name recognition gained from 40 years in the community attending church services, weddings, funerals, and charity events.  In the first situation the goodwill is probably practice goodwill separate from the individual lawyers, and in the other it is probably personal goodwill that cannot be transferred with the firm.

Michael Goldman's experience both as a corporate manager and an independent consultant in a wide range of different companies and different industries gives him the necessary perspective to go beyond the standard valuation templates and give an accurate assessment of a company's true value.

Representative List of Michael Goldman's Valuation Engagements