Seats are still available for our upcoming CM&AA Classes!

Sept 19-23, 2016

DePaul University | Loop Campus

Chicago, IL

Apply Here

November 14-18, 2016

Pepperdine University | 

Villa Graziadio Executive Center

Malibu, CA 

Apply Here

The CM&AA (Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor) Certification has become the "Gold Standard" for Middle Market Corporate Financial Advisors.  The 5-day program builds on your existing skills providing you with the necessary framework--and network--to further advance your professional and financial goals as well as those of the clients you serve.

Does Your Deal Have a Devil in the Details?

By: Matt Klauser

Occasionally hear business owners describe a company they're planning to sell as a simple and straightforward business. I'm a little skeptical when I hear these statements based on high-level assessments of the company, rather than a deep dive into the details of what truly drives the underlying business operations.

Throughout the life cycle of a due diligence project, buyers often ask sellers for information. The more difficult requests include gross margins by product, service or customer. When buyers initially receive pushback from a seller on a due diligence project, they often pivot the conversation and ask if they can sit down with the seller's IT personnel to extract detailed source-level information (e.g., sales invoicing and purchasing detail, bill of materials expense, payroll detail and time sheet records for labor expense.) 

Once the buyers extract this information and combine the output, they can build a margin analysis by product or service and customer that wasn't readily available from the seller. Such analysis requires much more than a high-level business assessment. Unfortunately, not all buyers and sellers engage in this advanced discussion. Based on polling results from a recent webinar I delivered, 54 percent of respondents indicated companies they work with can't track labor costs by product, project or service. 

Read full article here

The Power of Recapitalization - What it Can Do for Your Business

By: Chad Byers

A common misconception amongst business owners struggling to make ends meet is that they must give up their company completely in order to overcome the problem. While this may in fact be the case for some business owners, those who have a sound business strategy can remain in control of their business ventures when hard times arise.

One strategy when facing financial difficulties is recapitalization. Recapitalization is the process of selling equity in your company to outside investors in order to create a more stable capital structure. In essence, the company exchanges one form of financing for another. 

What can recapitalization do for your business? You might be surprised. The three potential outcomes listed below may make you consider restructuring your company's debt and equity mixture. 

Read full article here  

Financial Performance By Industry

By: Lloyd Bell

After outpacing the U.S economy's growth in 2014 by growing at 2.7% the value of all goods and services provided by Meaden & Moore clients, what I refer to as the Gross Meaden & Moore Product of GMMP, increased at a much weaker 0.3% in 2015. It should be noted that 33% of Meaden & Moore clients are in various manufacturing sectors, therefore softness in manufacturing has an outsized impact on GMMP. 

Gains in construction (7.4%) and agriculture (9.2%) were offset by weak performance recorded by machinery manufacturing and metal manufacturing which showed sales declines of 8.4% and 3.3% respectively. Interestingly, the average increase for all companies reporting higher revenues was 10.4% whereas those companies reporting sales declines experienced an average drop of 11.9%. Cost of goods sold did not keep pace with revenues due in part to lower steel and oil costs. As a result, gross profits in dollar terms increased 0.7%.

However, even those industry sectors which performed well in terms of overall revenue during 2015 were hit hard by rising operating expenses. Operating expenses grew at an average of 3.5% across the portfolio causing an average drop in EBITDA of 14.6%. Increased non-cash and interest expenses push profitability farther down as net income dropped at an average of 26.1%. The trends were not all inclusive, however, as several sectors reported highly profitable years including plastic manufacturing, health care and information providers. 

Read full article here  

Save the Date for the Alliance Winter Conference 2017! 

Feb 1-3, 2017 at the Bellagio in 

Las Vegas!