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Attorneys

Audit Professionals

Insurance Brokers

Tax Professionals

Trustees

Wealth Managers

We Value Your Clients.

Trusted Advisors refer their public and privately held clients to Marshall & Stevens to assist with the planning, execution, and reporting of important transactions.

Founded in 1932, the great majority of our work is referred by professionals who recommend adding M&S to the transaction team in order to best serve their clients. 

Our specialists provide independent opinions of value of businesses, securities, intangible assets, machinery & equipment, and real estate as well as transaction consulting so that our clients can make well-informed decisions and meet compliance requirements.

Common referrals from Transaction Advisors include:

Our team includes senior valuation professionals with experience working at international audit firms, investment banking, finance companies and other valuation firms. The diversity of talent and experience is available as needed to provide the best solution to each client.

Image with deSPAC Fairness Opinion text and eCombustible logo
Image with Estate Tax Valuation text and Confidential Trustees logo
Image of Bankruptcy Valuation text and Knotel logo

We help with questions like:

Q.

How are SPAC fairness opinions different for other fairness opinions?

A.

A SPAC is a public company; as such, all public company transactions receive scrutiny from a larger audience than private company transactions. That said, fairness opinions differ by scope of work – are we being asked to opine only to the consideration being paid (or received) or are we to also opine as to the process undertaken to arrive at the proposed transaction.

Our SPAC / de-SPAC transaction fairness analyses and opinions are typically done in phases to address value first, then fairness of the transaction consideration to the party engaging us.

Q.

Do you diligence your clients’ financial projections or just accept them as is?

A.

We review financial projections against past performance, comparable company performance, and industry forecasts. We ask for support from our clients, as necessary, to make us comfortable with their projections and to provide an explanation in our valuation report.

Q.

Private Equity, Hedge Funds, etc. are receiving more scrutiny every year from regulators but investors don’t want to spend a lot of time and fee on compliance. How can you help?

A.

We focus on efficiency. Our team includes senior valuation professionals with experience working at international audit firms – they did the same review work your audit firm valuation professionals do – making them a great resource to our clients. These specialists understand the materiality thresholds while meeting regulatory requirements.

We provide negative and positive assurance letters upon request.

Q.

My clients don’t want to spend money cleaning up lists of acquired assets and/or valuing acquired assets; they prefer just taking the seller’s book values. How can I convince them that your service is value added?

A.

There is often a material depreciation benefit to stepping up the value of acquired assets vs taking them over at book value. We provide preliminary estimates to determine if the fair value step up of the acquired assets is worthwhile to the acquiror.

We also find that sellers’ asset lists typically include a material percentage of assets no longer in use (“ghost assets”). Cleaning up the asset list can benefit a buyer in numerous ways:

  • Reducing goodwill
  • Not paying for insurance and property tax on assets that don’t exist.
  • Complying with audit requirements to have control of their assets.
Q.

Can one firm provide liquidation value, fair value, fair market value, and insurable value of the same assets or do I have to engage multiple firms?

A.

Upon request, we provide diverse value opinions for the same assets based upon the purpose and standard of value to efficiently accommodate the need for financing, financial reporting, tax reporting, and insurance. The efficiency in performing all these analyses at the same time leads to pricing benefits for our clients.

Q.

Why shouldn’t my client just rely on a broker or assessor for the real estate value?

A.

Real estate should be looked at strategically for potential beneficial tax reporting, financial reporting, depreciation including cost segregation and bonus depreciation, financing including sale leaseback, etc.

For financial reporting, the value of acquired real estate needs to be allocated to land, building and improvements, and intangible assets.

The fair market value of acquired real estate is often much higher than the seller’s capitalized basis and the allocation between land (not depreciable) and improvements (depreciable) is often different than what the assessor has determined.

Q.

What are the tax benefits of a cost segregation analysis on acquired real estate?

A.

The accelerated depreciation benefits (tax savings) from a cost segregation analysis on acquired real estate (sometimes just tenant improvements) can typically pay for a material percentage of the transaction costs and/or multiple financing payments.

Q.

Can you provide financial reporting analyses in accordance with international accounting standards and US GAAP?

A.

Our specialists have a great deal of experience providing financial reporting valuations for compliance with international and domestic accounting standards.

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