Valuation & Litigation Economist
In Business Since 1994 LOS ANGELES -NEW YORK
- Business Valuations
- Restricted Stock Discount Studies
- Calculation of Economic Damages
- Published Author of 2 Books and Over 20 Journal Articles
- Expert Witness
- Advanced Statistics & Mathematics
- Merger & Acquisition Analysis
- Valuation of Life Insurance Policies
- Fractional Interest Discount Studies
Books Authored
- Quantitative Business Valuation: A Mathematical Approach for Today's Professionals, ©2001, McGraw-Hill, ISBN #: 0-07-000215-0.1 This is a high-end, mathematical text for professional business appraisers.
- How to Value Your Business and Increase Its Potential ©2005, McGraw-Hill, ISBN #: 0-07139520-2. This is a text for the lay reader: business owners and their professionals (attorneys, accountants, and insurance agents).
Newsletter Author/Columnist
Business Valuation Q&A, Business Valuation Resources, LLC, Portland, OR. On a panel of experts to answer difficult questions posed by valuation practitioners.
Lecturer
American Society of Appraisers 5/12/04: Lectured to business and real estate appraisers in Southern California about using regression analysis in valuation.
- Invited by U.S. Tax Court Justice David Laro to lecture on business valuation to his valuation class at the University of San Diego, February 2002
- AICPA/NACVA Litigation Support Conference, Dallas, October 2001
- International Conference of the American Society of Appraisers, Toronto, June, 1996
- Anthony Robbins' Mastery University, Hawaii, April 1996
- National Center For Employee Ownership Conference, Chicago, April, 1997
- University of California at San Diego Extension
- University of Southern California — MBA Class of Professor Thomas Taulli
- Numerous lectures for Minimum Continuing Legal Education Credit, approved by State Bar of California—1994 to present
Education
- MBA, in finance and marketing, University of Chicago, 1982. Ph.D. courses in Economics.
- B.S., California State University, Northridge, Business Administration-Accounting Option, 1974. Received Arthur Young Outstanding Accounting Student Award 1972.
Work Experience
ABRAMS VALUATION GROUP NORTH HOLLYWOOD,2 NEW YORK
Business Valuations, Fractional Interest Discounts, Litigation Economics, Expert Witness, Fairness Opinions, ESOP Repurchase Liability Studies, M&A Analysis, Business Plans 1994
THEFELD, FINCH & ABRAMS SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
Partner in Charge of Valuation and Litigation Economics 1987-1994
PACIFIC CORPORATE VALUATION, INC. LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA
Vice-President, in charge of valuation practice. 1986-1987
ARTHUR D. LITTLE VALUATION, INC. WOODLAND HILLS, CALIFORNIA
Project Manager in charge of Columbia Pictures, Dr. Pepper, Purex, MCO Geothermal, VSA, etc. Project fees from $50,000 to $1 million, clients to $5 billion in sales. 1983-1985
RAYCOM, PARAMOUNT, CALIFORNIA
President of two-way radio sales and service firm. 1976-1979
ARTHUR ANDERSEN & COMPANY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
CPA. Auditor, Commercial Audit and Small Business Departments. 1974-1976
Inventions
- Abrams Log Size Model for calculating discount rates
- Economic Components Model for quantifying Discount for Lack of Marketability. My model for Discount for Lack of Marketability was used in Maris Distributing Co. v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 302 F.3d 1207 (11th Cir. 2002)
- Periodic Perpetuity Factors (Described in CFO Magazine, April 2002, p. 18)
- Annuity Discount Formulas for cash flows with growth and stub year
- Annuity Discount Formulas for monthly and daily cash flows with growth
- Formulas for valuing Leveraged ESOPs and calculating dilution
- Quantitative method for determining dilution to current investors from subsequent rounds of financing
- Iterative solution to eliminate inconsistencies in the Capital Asset Pricing Model arising from assumptions of capital structure in both Direct Equity Method and Invested Capital Approach
- Abrams Table of Accounting Transposition Errors, used for troubleshooting such errors. Also wrote software to automatically generate a table of potential sources of error.
- Several Formulas for Payout and Retention Ratios (for converting net income to cash flow), including a formula to calculate the Payout Ratio from historical depreciation and net working capital
- Formula for breakeven of sale to ESOP as a C corporation versus sale to a third party as an S corporation with a valuation premium
- Various damage formulas for lost inventory and lost profit—when inventory was produced and destroyed and for lost sales when inventory was not produced
- Methodology to calculate discount rate for Restricted Collateral Assignment agreement for receivable from life insurance proceeds
- Percentage of present value of all loan payments represented by principal, interest, and aftertax cost of the loan
Published Journal Articles
- "The Bias in Annual (vs. Monthly) Discounting is Immaterial," co-authored with R.K. Hiatt, Business Valuation Review, September 2003.
- "Forecasting Cash Flow: Mathematics of the Payout Ratio," Business Valuation Review, June 2003.
- "Problems in the QMDM and Comparison to Economic Components Model: A Response to Chris Mercer," Business Valuation Review, June 2002.
- "Discount Rates as a Function of Log Size and Valuation Error Measurement," The Valuation Examiner, in Feb./March, 1997.
- "ESOPs: Measuring and Apportioning Dilution," Valuation, June 1997
- "Arithmetic vs. Geometric Means: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Issues," accepted for publication by Business Valuation Review, but instead published as Chapter 5 of Quantitative Business Valuation: a Mathematical Approach for Today's Professionals.
- "An Iterative Valuation Approach," Business Valuation Review, March 1995
- "Discount For Lack of Marketability: A Theoretical Model," Business Valuation Review, September 1994.
- "A Breakthrough In Calculating Reliable Discount Rates," Valuation, August 1994.
- "An Iterative Procedure to Value Leveraged ESOPs," Valuation, January 1993.
- "Cash Flow—A Mathematical Derivation", Valuation, January 1994.
- "How To Quickly Find and Fix Accounting Transposition Errors," The Practical Accountant, June 1992.
- Co-Author of "Valuation of Companies for ESOP Purposes", Chapter 8 in Employee Stock Ownership Plans by Robert W. Smiley, Jr. and Ronald J. Gilbert, Prentice Hall/Rosenfeld Launer Publications, New York, copyright 1989. Sole author in the 2003 pending update of the book.
Journal Articles to be Submitted for Publication
- "Lost Inventory and Lost Profits Damage Formulas in Litigation."
- "The Tradeoff in Selling to an ESOP vs. an Outside Buyer."
Unpublished Articles
- "Empirical Testing of Unified Valuation Theory."3
- "Valuation of S Corporations: A Mathematical and Intuitive Explanation of Duffy and Johnson's Results"
- "The Annuity Discount Factor: Generalization, Analysis of Special Cases, and Relationship to the Gordon Model and Fixed-Rate Loan Amortization."
- "The Gordon Model: Derivation & Relation to the PE Multiple."
- "Impounding Discounts Into The Cap Rate"
1 Available through amazon.com, bn.com (Barnes and Noble), American Society of Appraisers, and Abrams Valuation Group. The book is out of print.
2 Company headquarters are in North Hollywood. Originally founded and run in San Diego from 1995-2001.
3 Business Valuation Review accepted this for publication. Instead it became Chapter 6 of Quantitative Business Valuation: A Mathematical Approach for Today's Professionals.