Business Valuation Seminar: April 2009

The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Society of Appraisers (ASA) is sponsoring a two-day Business Valuation Seminar on Thursday, April 23 and Friday, April 24, 2009 at the Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel in Plymouth Meeting, PA. The first day will cover the theory and practice of Monte Carlo Simulation. The second, programmatically independent, day will cover Real Options Valuations. Participants may register for one or both days. The instructors will be David Ewert, Ph.D and Kevin P. Couillard, ASA, who teach similar workshops in ASA's CAVS series.

Overview. As business valuation appraisals become more complex -- and third-party scrutiny escalates -- appraisers need models and tools that accurately portray the impact of uncertainty. The workshops will use hands-on exercises and case studies to examine the effect of uncertainty on value. Each day's program will qualify for eight hours of ASA Continuing Education Credit.

Monte Carlo Simulation. Monte Carlo methods, which rely on repeated random sampling, are often used to calculate the value of companies, corporate projects, and securities investments. Compared to so-called "what if" scenarious, which manually assign a few discrete values covering a wide range (such as best case, worst case, and most likely case), Monte Carlo simulation produces thousands of narrowly clustered outcomes, yielding more accurate, less uncertain valuation predictions.

Real Options Valuation. In real options valuation (ROV), the general ideas from financial options pricing theory -- the valuation of puts, calls and complex derivatives -- are applied along with some of the mathematics, such as Monte Carlo simulation, to the valuation of investments such as R&D projects, new drugs, mineral rights, or patents. The benefit of ROV as a technigue for evaluating investments under conditions of uncertainty, is that it provides a way of capturing value that otherwise goes unrecognized in traditional NPV analysis.

David Ewert, Ph.D is President of Atwood Conger & Ewert, LLC, an Atlanta, GA firm that provides financial and project management training and consulting services. An engineering graduate of Iowa State University, he earned an MS at the University of Minnesota, and a PhD in finance at Stanford University. Dr. Ewert is Professor Emeritus of Finance and Director Emeritus of the Executive MBA program at Georgia State University. A co-author of "Obtaining Unsecured Loans" for the Dow Jones Irwin Treasurer's Handbook, he has presented financial management seminars on six continents.

Kevin P. Couillard, ASA is Executive Director of FairValue Advisors, LLC, an Alpharetta, GA professional services firm specializing in business valuation, litigation support and management advisory services. A chemical engineering graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Mr. Couillard earned an MBA in finance from Georgia State University, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He specializes in the valuation of businesses, limited-market business interests, and intangible assets and providing expert testimony regarding valuation matters.

Daily Timetable
Registration, Buffet Breakfast	7:30 am-8:00 am
Morning Session*	8:00 am-12:15 pm
Lunch	12:15 pm-1:15 pm
Afternoon Session*	1:15 pm-5:30 pm
*Morning and Afternoon Sessions include Refreshment Break

Seminar Fees. The seminar registration fee is $325 per day. The fee includes breakfast, snacks and lunch.

Additional Information. A seminar brochure, including additional information, a registration form, refund and cancellation policies is available in PDF format [18 KB]. Brief biographies of the instructors are also available [PDF: 22 KB]. For all other questions, including continuing education credits for your organization, please contact the seminar organizer, Bob Haas at rhaasjr@rmha.com or (215) 887-6500.