Providing Expert Business Valuation Services for Legal, M&A etc Purposes    

If we are approached to sell a business, we will always offer business owners a preliminary, verbal, free business valuation to assist them in their decision making. We provide written, formal business valuations on a day rate basis when these are required for the purposes of legal proceedings, mergers, separations etc.

It normally takes a minimum of 1.5 days to carry out a desk-based valuation of a small uncomplicated business – this allows enough time for us to carry out the necessary financial analysis of the accounts, gain an understanding of the business from websites, marketing literature etc and also to speak at reasonable length to the owner or responsible director. For larger, more complicated businesses we will do our best to provide an upfront estimate of the time. In larger, more complicated cases it will be necessary for us to visit the business. Our charge out rate is £750 per day plus expenses.Although there are different approaches to the valuation of private businesses they are generally founded on the principle of a multiple of the annual cash figure which the business can be expected to generate under new ownership. The first job is therefore to estimate the cash flows adjusted for the costs of new ownership. Adjustments are typically made, for example, for the owner’s salary to bring it into line with the cost of replacing the owner with a manager, or for rent where a business is paying more or less than the commercial rent because the freehold is owned by the business owner. Other factors that need to be taken account of in the valuation include the level of risk which the business faces (which could therefore impact future cashflows) and the balance sheet structure. 

Quote from History: ‘Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.’  Warren Buffett (b. 1930)

In summary, Anderson Shaw provides a formal business valuation service for solicitors, accountants and other advisers who require these for legal proceedings, business incorporation, M&A purposes etc.  However, business sellers often need to know, roughly, the business worth before selling a business and we are happy to provide a free valuation verbally.