Sorry I’m late!

August 11, 2023

Only 9 months ago we were completing around two valuations a month.  This week alone we are completing five.

Our valuations team are working round the clock and I tell them that this is what it feels like to be a lawyer!

I’m pleased to say that one of our lawyer friends recently told me that our valuation report had saved a £multimillion deal from collapsing. 

The valuations we are doing are enormously varied.

Of course, they are all highly confidential, and usually very sensitive, but I can allude to the fact that we can definitely value assets which are not just sitting in a company.

The needs for valuations are also varied.

There’s almost always a tax element but increasingly we are being asked to provide valuations relating to transactions.

We hadn’t anticipated that there would be demand from sellers to obtain valuations prior to going into negotiations with a buyer, but it turns out that there is.

We’ve just finished a valuation that involved companies under common ownership but not otherwise legally connected, excepting only they have commercial agreements with one other.

The companies are being acquired by one purchaser.

In another life the companies might be in a group structure which would have been fairly straightforward, but in this case it has been necessary to understand how the purchase proceeds should be attributed to each one.

This involved a thorough analysis of the value of each company on a standalone basis and then to have a think about whether any one of them held a controlling position vis a vis the others.

Fortunately we did find one that, de facto, controlled the others through the commercial agreements. That meant we could allocate more of the monies to that company as a post valuation adjustment.

The more we do valuations, the more intrigued we become, especially in projects which are tricky, unusual or just plain complex.