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7 Ways Investors Look at Your (or Any) Business

After being involved with many business transactions over many years, I’ve realized that there are at least seven ways that potential investors look at a business. Not every investor will look from every perspective. There are, of course, financial buyers and strategic buyers, and their perspectives will likely not be the same and not all perspectives will be relevant for every company. However, these various perspectives are worth discussing for your consideration.

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10 Reasons That Businesses Change Ownership

Ownership and management transitions for business owners are key topics of this blog. Sometimes, however, when I talk to business owners, they tend to believe that their businesses will be immune to the processes I’m talking about. After all, a few of us are going to live together, right? To put the concept of business ownership into perspective, this post discusses 10 reasons that business ownership changes hands. The list is not all-inclusive, but perhaps, as you read down the list, you will begin to see that this ownership transition thing could actually happen to you.

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Where Have I Been?

My blogging activity recently has been a bit slow.  I haven’t learned the art, if that is what it is, of blogging during intense periods of work.  This post is offered as a form of apology for my absence from ChrisMercer.net. I was in Tokyo earlier this month and spoke on the topic of “The […]

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International Valuation Standards Council’s Annual Meetings in Tokyo

The International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) is having its Annual General Meeting in Tokyo this week.  The Professional Board and Standards Board will hold their public meetings this week.  The Board of Trustees will also meet and participate in the Annual General Meeting.  In addition, there will be a meeting of the IVSC Advisory Forum, […]

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What is an Investor’s Portfolio Return When a Major Asset is a Private Company Investment?

If you have funds invested with asset managers, you almost certainly get monthly or quarterly reports on performance, or the yield, or the return on your portfolio for the preceding month, quarter or year. And the performance of your portfolio will be “benchmarked” against appropriate indices of comparable investments. Unfortunately, this concept of managing wealth by reporting on financial performance does exist with most closely held and private companies.

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The One Percent Solution – Introducing 12 Strategies for Managing Private Wealth

A number of One Percent Solution Activities were identified in the earlier post, including wealth manager compensation, annual appraisals for monitoring performance, buy-sell agreement pricing, life insurance funding, estate planning, and others.  It is now time identify a number of One Percent Solution Strategies for managing private wealth.

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PwC Family Business Survey 2012/2013 – Overview

PwC has conducted a family business survey on a number of occasions in recent years.  I recently read the PwC Family Business Survey 2012/2013, which deals with the top challenges faced by family businesses at the present time.  Those challenges include dealing with the general economic situation, price competition (at home and abroad), the need […]