In Focus

• Here Are the IFRS Updates That Became Effective This January
• Eight Accounting Items Companies Need to Consider This Year
• Key Changes to Proposed Accounting Standards Update on Segment Reporting
• The Important Updates to IFRS in 2022
• IFRS vs U.S. GAAP - Are You Ready for Impairment Testing?
• Rising Interest Rates Might Mean Your Assets are Impaired Now Under IFRS
• Five Takeaways From the AICPA Conference
• A Beginner’s Look at IFRS Updates in 2023: What You Need to Know
• Time for a Fresh Start? Key Financial Moves to Make After Bankruptcy

Wide Lens

• Fairness Opinions: A Guide for Selecting a Provider
• Fairness Considerations in a Downturn
• Continuation Vehicles: Valuation and Fairness Considerations
• A Look at the SEC’s Proposed Rules on Adviser-Led Secondary Transactions

What’s Trending

• Navigating the Shifting Crypto Regulatory Landscape
• ESG Outlook and Impact on Valuation and Accounting Issues
• How to Separate Personal From Enterprise Goodwill in Divorce
• How are Investors Thinking About ESG?
• Stout Executives Share How Relentless Excellence Allows Us to Thrive

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Stout provides an independent perspective to our transaction opinions by using proven valuation techniques, sophisticated financial and cash flow modeling, thorough industry analysis, and extensive due diligence. Because each and every opinion is reviewed by our transaction opinions committee, we provide fiduciaries assurance that the transaction was diligently investigated and reviewed.

Typical fairness opinion engagements include:

• Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures
• Going-private and conflict transactions
• Buy-side and sell-side advisory
• Recapitalizations
• Related-party transfers
• Secondary and continuation fund transactions

With the volume of GP-led secondary and continuation fund transactions expected to increase, GPs should carefully consider the underlying process for determining the value at which these deals transact. Consistent third-party valuations and an independent fairness opinion can help protect GPs from those seeking to challenge a transaction in hindsight.

Visit our Secondary Transactions Resource Center and learn more about our transaction opinion work and other Transaction Advisory services.

Select Engagements

• Provided fairness opinion to a middle-market private equity firm
• Provided fairness opinion to private equity fund general partner
• Provided fairness opinion on merger of portfolio companies

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Asset Management Spotlight

Contradicting macroeconomic market indicators are resulting in a complex environment for businesses and investors to navigate. Some of the current challenges are due to decades-long macroeconomic trends, such as aging demographics; others are driven by more recent events, such as upticks in geopolitical conflict and instability. Read our Asset Management Spotlight for what you need to know about dealmaking in asset management as well as key trends in valuation approaches given the state of the economy.

Structured Finance Commentary

While the global pressure of higher rates transmits from the financial sector to the real economy, we see a very low likelihood of an all-out contagion in 2023. The investing environment continues to remain murky, but the best asset managers are successfully navigating these challenging conditions by prudently allocating capital to new types of assets and novel structures. Learn more in our latest Structured Finance Commentary. 

Since 2012, Stout has consistently been recognized as a top fairness opinion provider by Refinitiv’s Global Mergers & Acquisitions Review. In 2022, Stout ranked first in the United States and second globally.

Stout is pleased to announce the expansion of our Financial & Tax Due Diligence practices. Stout veterans Joe Randolph and Jeff Zellner have been named Co-Leaders of the Financial Due Diligence practice, and we welcome Jerry Schwartzman as Managing Director and Head of M&A Tax Services. “M&A activity in the middle market has held up fairly well, and demand for diligence services remain strong,” says Randolph.

Stout is proud to be partnering with APGA Tour player Marcus Byrd. Byrd won the first event of the 2023 APGA Tour season in January with a victory at the APGA Tour Farmers Insurance Invitational at Torrey Pines for his third career APGA Tour victory. He was announced by Tiger Woods as the 2023 Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption and competed in the Genesis Invitational in February.

You can read more about our accomplishments in our annual report.