VALUATION EXPERIENCE COUNTS!
OVER 30 YEARS DIVERSE BUSINESS AND REAL ESTATE APPRAISAL EXPERIENCE.
Introduction:
We are a diversified financial advisory and expert witness services firm providing expert opinions on business, real estate, and machinery and equipment valuations; econometrics; and forecasting. Additionally we provide business and real estate brokerage services, and fairness opinions for mergers and acquisitions. Accredited Business Appraisals is a firm with over 30 years experience in these above fields, providing thousands of well supported and documented, comprehensively researched, technically sound, unbiased, and defensible valuations and financial opinions for a wide range of legal and business contexts. Our wealth of valuation, econometric and forecasting experience includes nearly every industry and financial asset, both tangible and intangible, from very large publicly traded companies, to new business ventures, to small mom and pop businesses. Attorneys, accountants, estate planners, bankers and individuals alike, regularly have turned to us and recommended us for their valuation and econometric needs.
History:
Accredited Business Appraisals is a national firm, whose principals each have over 30 years experience in finance, valuation, econometric and statistical modeling, business and real estate litigation, and business and real estate brokerage.
Accredited Business Appraisals was started in 1993 by its principal Jeffrey B. Wolpin. Previously Mr. Wolpin worked as a middle market, mergers and acquisitions deal maker with the international Merchant Bank of Hambros Bank of London, and was attending Loyola Law School, when in 1993 he recognized the growing need for independent valuation and financial opinions by the legal and business community.
Accredited Business Appraisals has since grown into a premier, nationally recognized, independent valuation and financial advisor with clients ranging from Maine to California. The firm has performed several thousand business and real estate valuations, brokered numerous real properties and businesses, and provided litigation and testimony services for the aforementioned in such contexts as estate and gift tax controversies, eminent domain controversies, marital and corporate dissolution controversies, etc.
Among the many qualities which sets Accredited Business Appraisals apart from its competitors is the depth of experience of its principals across a wide range of financial, valuation and legal contexts.This depth of expertise includes business and real estate valuation and real world brokerage, statistical and econometric modeling, and time series and forecasting in various business and legal contexts. Its principals have the unique knowledge and experience to know when to apply both qualitative/judgmental forecasting and valuation techniques, and quantitative, statistical and econometric techniques.This is especially important in the litigation context where jurists have expressed dissatisfaction with traditional valuation experts whose valuation opinions, upon cross examination, have been exposed to be arbitrary or predominantly subjective, based upon highly flawed data and research, ideology, and/or the exclusive weight of some superficial credential sold by a voluntary membership privately held credentialing organization, a.k.a. trade association, providing self serving, unaccredited, and substandard training in finance and econometrics.
Independence:
Independence counts! Of principal importance is Accredited Business Appraisals’ independence. Jurists have expressed disapproval with valuation experts who have either overt or implied conflicts of interests with their clients. We pride ourselves on our independence, rigorously avoiding any appearance of such conflicts in our financial and valuation opinions. This cannot be said of many CPAs and CPA/Valuation firms who follow self serving AICPA standards which, contrary to numerous judicial findings and requirements, erroneously excuse such conflicts of interest as having a de-minimis effect on valuation opinions and which permit their CPA members to provide valuation opinions to their tax and audit clients. Such conflicts, whether explicit or implicit, have proven to be a slippery slope, as evidenced by such CPA caused bankruptcies as Enron, Worldcom, Cendant, Arthur Anderson, etc.
Our Diverse Experience:
The principals and individuals working at Accredited Business Appraisals currently hold or have held various business and real estate valuation credentials including Masters in Business Administration (MBA), State Certified General Real Estate Appraisal Licenses, State Licensed Real Estate and Business Brokers, and voluntary membership trade associations designations like Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) with the American Society of Appraisers, and Certified Business Appraiser (CBA) with the Institute of Business Appraisers which was sold to the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA).
However, it is important to note that our expertise and years of experience far exceeds the rudimentary, often flawed, antiquated or politically biased, self-serving training and entry level requirements for any of the credentials sold and sometimes given away by many of the aforementioned voluntary membership, “for profit”, trade associations. It is also important to note that membership in any of these aforementioned trade associations is not mandatory, that these organizations have no statutory authority under the law or the tax code, nor do these memberships guarantee competence, contrary to the self aggrandizing, hyperbolic claims of many of these organizations and their members. All of these private trade groups assert that their motives are to protect of the public trust, but is that really true? Perhaps Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, said it best when he described licensing and trade credentials as follows:
… licensing, Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, declared in his 1962 classic “Capitalism and Freedom,” is an affront to freedom and a check on economic dynamism — a modern, Western equivalent of medieval guilds and Indian castes. “Licensure,” he wrote, “almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to obtain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public.”
We provide highly experienced valuation, econometric, forecasting and expert witness services of businesses, real estate, and machinery and equipment for a diverse range of business, investment, legal and litigation contexts which include, but is not limited to… (see sidebar).