We are pleased to welcome as our speaker Ms. Catherine (Kate) Kowalewski, Director in the Forensic Consulting Group at CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann, one of the nation's largest accounting, tax and consulting firms. Kate will be speaking to us on Corporate and Business Valuation -- the basics, the subtleties, how to do them, and why they matter..

Here is a quick summary of the key information in this announcement:

Date: Tuesday, February 6, via Zoom

Time: 8:30-10:00 AM Pacific time

CPE Credit: 1.0 hours

Speaker: Ms. Kate Kowalewski, Director in the Forensic Consulting Group at CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann

Topic: Corporate and Business Valuations

Registering yourself:

Members: http://www.thefeng.org/. Log in with your password, go to info for this meeting.

Guests: https://www.thefeng.org/chapters/california

As this virtual meeting will be held via Zoom, please register yourself for the meeting as shown above, before noon Pacific time today, February 5th. When you register, you will be sent a quick acknowledgment message and then you will receive a link, later this afternoon, for entering the Zoom meeting tomorrow morning.

For more detail on registering, and on the meeting itself and our speaker, see below.

The meeting is free for all FENG members and their guests. For those desiring CPE credit, 1.0 hours CPE credit will be given out, with the procedure for this to be reviewed in the meeting.

The Details: Discussion Topic and Meeting Agenda

Many of us have had to deal with issues of business valuation at various times in our careers. It could be in connection with the sale of your company, or the acquisition of another company. It could be for reasons of stock option issuance, or option valuation, or for raising money from outside investors. It could be any number of situations. And for those among us who have not yet had that pleasure, many of you will in the future.

To the uninitiated, business valuation can seem like a complex, arcane science, not understandable by the mere mortals among us. Like most things in life, however, with some basic information and learning, the fundamental concepts and methodologies can suddenly be put into a perspective that makes eminently good sense.

That's another way of saying that valuing a business is both a science and an art. Valuing a business can be tricky. That's why two different valuation experts can come up with multiple values for a given business.

In this presentation Kate will examine a host of questions, including:

• When is a valuation needed?

• What are the different valuation approaches that get used?

• What are the reasons why business valuations diverge?

• What are the differences between valuing a public vs private company? a startup company vs a mature company?

• How can you value intellectual property and other intangibles?

• What is IRS Section 409A -- and who is affected by it... and when?

• How to differentiate between common stock and preferred? What about stock options, or restricted stock?

• When hiring a valuation expert, what guidance, if any, should a CFO give?

• When a company is being sold, how do you determine the price? Does it depend on who the buyer is?

• If a company has audited GAAP financials, why would an appraiser make "adjustments" to those financials? Examples?

• Why do some industries use a multiple of revenue to do valuations, while others use a multiple of earnings? Which is right? And if you're using earnings, what version of earnings -- EBITDA, operating earnings, net after tax...? -- and does it need to be adjusted from the way the seller may be reporting it?

• What differences might exist between an industry expert and a valuation expert?

• If two opposing parties get into a game of "dueling valuation experts", but they both want the deal to go through, who wins? If it ends like Burr and Hamilton, the deal probably won't make it... so what are the rules of engagement?

These issues and more make up the daily life of a corporate valuation expert, and they're not easy issues. Kate is going to shine some light on these so that we can be far more knowledgeable about them in the future.

Whether you've had very little exposure to valuation issues, or you're a seasoned veteran of multiple valuation wars, you will get a lot out of this presentation. You will understand how valuation methodologies vary depending on the purpose of the valuation and other factors, and how two or more competent valuation experts could arrive at different values. You'll leave the room with more understanding and insight than when you walked in.

About our speaker:

Catherine “Kate” Kowalewski is Director in CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann’s Forensic Consulting Group. She is both a CPA and a lawyer. Kate provides her clients with a broad range of forensic accounting and litigation support services. She specializes in providing financial and economic damages analysis, and business valuation opinions for corporate buyout transactions, marital dissolution matters, gift and estate tax purposes, and numerous other situations.

In addition to those mentioned above, Kate has performed analyses in hundreds of engagements, including family law disputes, fraud investigations, business-related disputes, trust and probate matters, and business valuation calculations.

Kate is an expert in financial and economic damages analysis, fraud investigations, and litigation support. She provides her clients with a broad range of forensic accounting services with engagements that include family law disputes, business-related disputes, trust and probate matters, bankruptcy matters, white-collar crimes, consumer and financial fraud cases and economic damage calculations.

Kate received her Bachelors of Business Administration, in Accounting and Business Prelaw, from Ohio University, her MBA from Hasselt University in Belgium, and her Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law. She received her CPA license initially from Ohio and then from California. She is a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF). She is currently the San Diego Chapter Committee Chair Forensic Services Section of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants. She is a member of the State Bar of California, San Diego County Bar Association, AICPA, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Institute of Divorce Financial Analysts and American Society of Appraisers.

She started out her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a corporate tax associate and later became a partner at a leading complex class action law firm, before setting up her own law and consulting firm. She joined CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann in 2017.