Drivers behind today's seller's market
It is no secret that the merger & acquisition (“M&A”) market has been vibrant and showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. There are a plethora of statistics and charts that can be produced to demonstrate the health of the M&A market, but an exhaustive quantitative review of transaction activity will be for another day. That said, let’s at least set the table with a couple instructive reference points for context.
Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT) - A Way to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too!
What is a SLAT?
A SLAT is an estate planning tool available to a married couple that allows a spouse the ability to remove assets from their combined estates by making a sizeable irrevocable gift to a trust today for the benefit of the other spouse, children, and/or future generations. If properly structured, the gift will not be subject to estate tax in either spouse's estate (using the donor spouse's Unified Credit) but will still allow the couple to maintain access (limited) to both income and principal during the lifetime of the donee spouse.
“What do you think my company is worth?” As a firm that provides both business appraisal and M&A advisory services that is the twenty-four thousand dollar question that we get asked all the time. And why not? It’s pretty important in any context.
As a firm that often works closely with entrepreneurs in the transition of their business, be it through a long range exit planning exercise or within the context of a sell-side M&A transaction, we are acutely aware of how complex and nuanced the sale process has become. Owner-operators, management teams, Boards, and more generally, the principal stakeholders need to wrestle with a host of issues. The laundry list includes establishing valuation expectations, defining strategic and cultural fit, securing livelihoods for their valued employees, determining what kind of process they want (auction or otherwise), formulating a buyer universe, pre-transaction due diligence, post LOI due diligence, reps and warranties within the P&S, and so on and so forth.
