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5 Settlement Documents that Divorcing Business Owners Must Have

by bvertz on Jun 8, 2011 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When business owners get divorced, their settlement may have profound consequences for the business and other owners. Often, one spouse “sells” or gives up a share of the business to the other spouse. Since most small business owners do not have enough cash to pay a lump sum for that share, they might have to make installment payments over months or years. It is critical to structure the divorce settlement properly with documents that will minimize tax consequences, quantify and secure the payments to be made to the spouse who is leaving the business, and preserve the company’s ability to operate and obtain financing. These are the top five documents that a business owner should have when finalizing a divorce where a spouse is “selling” his or her share of the business to the other spouse:

1. Marital Settlement Agreement. Divorce courts rarely issue orders containing sufficient detail to adequately protect business owners who are divorcing. Settlement provides the best opportunity to resolve important financial and tax issues that a divorce court might overlook. A settlement agreement should contain a clear description of the stock, partnership or LLC membership units, and other business interests being sold or waived, how much is being paid, when it is being paid, and what happens if the payments are not made in full and on time. Unincorporated associations are tricky because their assets and liabilities are often intertwined with the owners’ personal assets and liabilities, so be as clear as possible. When setting the price, the business owner must consider whether the price is consistent with the value reported to tax authorities for estate planning purposes. The spouse who is making payments might be required to maintain enough life insurance, retirement assets, or investments to pay off the obligation in full upon death or default. The other documents related to the sale of the business (installment note, security agreement, etc.) can be attached to the marital settlement agreement and signed at the same time.

2. Installment Note. The installment note states the price that a business owner must pay for a spouse’s share of the business, the timing and amount of each installment payment, and the consequences for late payments or default. If the payments will be made over a period of years, the note might include interest (particularly for late payments). An acceleration clause might make the entire balance due immediately upon sale of the business, death, bankruptcy, or other major events. In some jurisdictions, a confession of judgment clause might avoid the delay and expense of a collection lawsuit if there is a default. The majority owner might be required to provide a personal guarantee. The note can also be secured by a mortgage against real estate or lien on business assets, such as equipment and receivables.

3. Mortgage/Security Agreement. An installment note can be secured by a mortgage against real estate or lien on business assets, such as equipment and receivables. The lien against business assets can be recorded publicly by filing a UCC-1. In some cases, the business might want to subordinate the mortgage or security agreement so that trade creditors and lenders who demand higher priority will not withdraw their credit.

4. Pledge of Stock. A pledge agreement creates a lien on the stock of the business. The pledge agreement might contain representations and warranties about the financial condition of the business or give the selling spouse a right to vote the pledged stock or inspect the books until paid off. If dividends or distributions are paid, the pledge agreement might direct the proceeds to be paid toward the loan. The pledge can also restrict the sale, gifting or dilution of the stock.

5. Consent and Waiver. If the business owners have previously signed a buy-sell agreement or right of first refusal, giving the company or other owners a right to buy their shares, then they should probably obtain the consent of those other owners before transferring stock between themselves. A consent and waiver confirms that the company and other owners will not exercise their rights when divorcing spouses transfer their stock.

Blazer: Double Dip Still Moribund in California

by bvertz on Sep 8, 2010 • Comments Closed • , , , , ,

Last year I had the privilege of attending the BVR/Morningstar Summit on Best Practices in Business Valuation in Divorce, which will be held this month in Chicago. Unfortunately I have to miss it this year as I will be visiting my new niece in San Diego. They will be discussing the latest developments in business valuation and complex financial issues in divorce, including the following summary of a double-dipping decision from California, which I am posting verbatim from the BVWire blast email:

In re Marriage of Blazer, (August 25, 2009) (partially unpublished)
The California Court of Appeal considered two issues of first impression: whether an owner’s capital account in a small, closely held company should count toward his income for determining spousal support; and whether the ultimate support award, when combined with the disposition and division of the business as a going concern, constitutes an impermissible “double dip” into the income stream of the business and of the owner-spouse.

Profitable produce company. The husband owned a brokerage fruit company in California, focusing primarily on the strawberry market. The trial court valued the closely held business at $5.6 million. Although each party presented expert testimony, the record did not reveal their respective methodologies or the trial court’s determination, except to note that it used the “capitalization of excess earnings method.” It ultimately awarded the entire business to the husband and all remaining asserts to the wife, plus a $1.34 million equalization payment.

In determining the wife’s request for permanent support, the trial court also considered whether the husband’s contribution of roughly $1.4 million from his capital account to expand and integrate the company was a reasonable business expense. Due to changes in the produce industry, the “buyer-broker” entity was being phased out, the husband testified, and unless the company moved into the farming and distribution markets, it would “not exist, it will be gone.” The husband’s expert, a CPA, noted that the company was “very thinly capitalized,” and that the funds were the husband’s to invest and should not be credited as income for purposes of spousal support. The wife’s expert agreed that the business could be better capitalized, but declined to express any “legal” opinion regarding the nature of the husband’s contributions, conceding only that capital withdrawals were generally not taxable as income.

Based on this evidence, the trial court excluded the funds used to expand the business from its award of spousal support. “The need to maintain higher capitalization in the company and the need to diversify the company’s work are reasonable expenses that should not be charged against [the husband’s] income,” it said, “but rather should be taken out of the company before assessing what his reasonable income is for purposes of support.”

As a final matter, it awarded the wife $20,000 per month in permanent support—and both parties appealed. The wife claimed the trial court should have accounted for all of the husband’s income, including the funds in his capital account, before awarding maintenance, while the husband claimed the award unfairly permitted the wife to “double dip” into his business’s income stream. In other words, because the court awarded the wife half of the business’s goodwill value in the property division, which was measured by the excess earnings method, it should not have considered those same earnings in assessing his ability to pay her support.

Both arguments lack direct legal authority. The appellate court tackled the wife’s arguments first, finding nothing in California precedent directly on point. The wife offered two cases, one that permitted a trial court to consider future income from a husband’s bonuses in its award of spousal and child support; and a second case that permitted consideration of income from the future exercise of stock options. But as the husband pointed out, in those cases, the supporting spouse was an employee, not a business owner. Accordingly, the appellate court found them apposite to the current case. However, the record provided substantial support for the trial court’s factual findings regarding the nature of the business and its expenses, including testimony from the husband and his expert. Moreover, the applicable California statute requires courts to consider the “earned and unearned income and the assets of the supporting party,” the appellate court pointed out, with emphasis. Thus, the trial court acted well within its discretion by attributing the reinvested funds to the business instead of the husband, and the appellate court confirmed its alimony award.

In considering the issue of the double-dip, the court found no direct support in California case law. The husband offered cases from other jurisdictions, including New York, which prohibits courts from double-counting the income from professional licenses.  “Once a court converts a specific income stream into an asset, that income may no longer be calculated into the maintenance formula and payout,” the court noted, citing Grunfeld v. Grunfeld 709 N.Y.S.2d 486 (Ct. App. 2000) (available at BVLaw™). At the same time, “there is no double counting to the extent that maintenance is based [on] spousal income which is not capitalized and then converted into and distributed as marital property,” the Grunfeld court held.

California courts have addressed the argument against double-dipping when dividing pension funds and determining support—but they have rejected its “superficial appeal,” this court observed. In one case, the award of spousal support extended only three years after the divorce, but in all cases, when “one spouse receives permanent . . . support from the other spouse, the source is from the separate property of the paying spouse, including . . . earnings or property which were once the community property of both spouses,” the court said (quoting a 1979 California Supreme Court opinion). Thus, it rejected the legal basis for the husband’s argument against double-dipping in divorce.

The appellate court also found no factual basis for it in the record. Unfortunately, the trial court’s orders did not explicitly identify the intangibles it valued when applying the capitalized excess earnings method to the business. Nor did it appear to have valued the business using a stream of future income belonging to the husband, the appellate court noted.  Despite testimony from the husband’s expert that “the excess earnings method of valuing goodwill in a professional corporation . . . is not far removed from a prediction about future earnings,” the court rejected the notion that this valuation method “compels a determination that [the business’s] goodwill value is tied to the husband’s future efforts.”

First, testimony by the husband’s expert—even though it was uncontradicted, was not conclusive proof of such a finding. Second, and more importantly, “an entity’s future earnings do not always correspond with the owner’s contribution of labor,” the court found. The case law has long recognized that “goodwill may exist separate and apart from the services of the person who created it.” Although goodwill and earnings may arise from the personal talents, skills, and reputation of an individual employee, their value may attach to and continue with the business even after that employee departs.

Despite lapses in the record, it sufficiently showed that the trial court valued the husband’s business without including any of his potential or continuing income, the appellate court concluded. Further, nothing in the applicable statute precluded the trial court from recognizing the husband’s future earnings as income available for spousal support, even though such income was undoubtedly his separate property; the trial court also considered the wife’s future investment earnings from her award of marital assets to determine her reasonable needs.  “To sum up, Calfornia authority offerns no basis for treating husband’s earnings from his ongoing business differently fvrom income generated by other assets divided at dissolution, for purposes of determining spousal support,” the court held, and declined to adopt any prohibition against the double-dip in divorce.

This summary suggests that California jurisprudence remains relatively unsophisticated on this important issue, which I might explain in the following way: a business valuation is a hypothetical sale of the business. If the business were sold in conjunction with the divorce, the business owner would receive a price equal to the fair market value yielded by the business valuation. That price is the marital asset that is divided in equitable distribution. The former owner of the business might then have to get a job, where he or she might earn a salary equal to the “reasonable compensation” element of the business valuation. Any future support obligation might be based on the reasonable compensation figure, but must not be based on excess salary and/or business profits that the owner might have received prior to the hypothetical sale, because the owner is no longer receiving such benefits after the “sale.”  The divorce court must not consider the business owner’s actual compensation and profits when calculating post-divorce support obligations. On the other hand, any support obligations imposed prior to the divorce (i.e., prior to the hypothetical sale) may be based on the owner’s entire compensation and profits because the double dip does not occur until the business is “sold.” The court in Blazer seemed to miss this concept in its analysis.

One of my colleagues believes that there is a flaw in the double dipping argument when applied to business valuation because the business may continue to generate profits in the distant future.  Mathematically, a business valuation is a net present value calculation, derived from the sum of the profits generated by the business year after year into infinity. Valuation is not based upon profits for a limited period of time; it is unlimited. By viewing the valuation as a hypothetical sale, this concept is easier to understand. A business owner will not receive profits at any future time period after selling the business.

Blazer demonstrates the importance of building a record at the trial court level and explaining valuation concepts in concrete terms. It is easy for a court to misconstrue esoteric terms like “goodwill,” but it seems unlikely that an expert could deny that fair market value implies a hypothetical sale, or that valuation is the net present value of an infinite series of annual profits.

Do Not Let Divorce Dissolve Your Family Business

by bvertz on Jun 8, 2010 • Comments Closed • , , , , ,

While doing research on corporate control issues recently, I came across the following article, published by The Wilmington Trust, a venerable private wealth management firm:

Imagine attending the next board meeting of your venerable family firm, only to be seated across from your former spouse’s new partner, who is 15 years your junior. With the divorce rate high, the liklihood of these situations occurring is increasing. But when it comes to protecting your family business from such potentially disagreeable divorce fallout, it’s important to take some precautionary steps:

  • Develop a corporate culture that separates ownership from authority and control.
  • Employ legal tactics and structures to prevent a divorce from deadlocking the business.
  • Establish mechanisms (including participation in family business associations) to keep the channels of communication open and prevent small conflicts from becoming big.

Corporate Culture
Too many families confuse a stake in the business with authority and control. Here is one textbook example from Paul Karofsky, director of the Northeastern University Center for Family Business: “A century-old company, in which ownership was diluted among 18 grandchildren, gave everyone an identical salary, private office and luxury car regardless of their job with the now-defunct company. It would have been much more appropriate to provide salaries and benefits commensurate with their job descriptions and to distribute dividends based on their ownership and profits.”

The model for separating ownership from control in a mature family company, such as the one with 18 owners, is akin to a public company. At Staples®, where just about everyone owns stock — from truck drivers to senior management — no one has grounds to complain when a truck driver, who bought Staples stock 20 years ago, owns a bigger stake in the company and has a higher net worth than his newly hired, better-paid branch manager.

Legal Tactics
When children marry and their spouses enter the family with a presumption of status in the company, the stresses can severely impede business success. Add divorce, and the business could be doomed. As the founder, or senior family member, you have a responsibility to protect the company from being deadlocked by an irate ex-spouse following a child’s divorce. When the children are young and unmarried, it is relatively easy to insist on prenuptial agreements to prohibit spouses from owning stock. To encourage acceptance among the adult children and their betrothed, make it clear that the lack of stock ownership bears no relationship to a financial settlement in the event of divorce.

Obviously, prenuptial agreements cannot be required if marriages have already taken place or in situations where spouses feel justified in owning part of the business. For example, two sisters started a small, mail-order company to sell gardening tools. One sister’s husband offered to set up and run the website, which became hugely profitable. Meanwhile, the other sister’s husband helped out with the books and eventually joined the burgeoning company as CFO. The small business grew into a sophisticated corporation, with no one addressing any of the tough issues such as divorce, death, succession, and so forth.

In an emerging business, such as the gardening tool company, the owners and their spouses must recognize that their obligation to the business far outweighs their individual need for control. Since the spouses are already active in the company, one solution is to create a trust which will own and control all of the stock. In addition to family members, the trust should have one or more outside trustees, preferably a corporate trustee, to break any deadlock. Without a trust in place, shareholders can seek, and will likely receive, a remedy from the courts if a deadlock threatens the business. Unfortunately, having the courts make business decisions is costly and cumbersome, and everyone can wind up with bruised feelings. Trust documents should be re-examined and revised periodically to make sure they continue to serve business and family interests.

Family Business Associations
Family Business Associations can assist in facilitating communication, resolving conflict, and providing management, legal, and other insights. In addition, these organizations offer family business owners, including spouses and children, an opportunity to share their problems and solutions in a non-threatening, peer-to-peer forum.

In a Nutshell

  • The divorce rate is high, but the probability of divorce increases when the number of family members involved in the business grows.
  • Disputes over power, money, and control at home will be played out in the business.
  • Be alert to status issues, both within the company and community.
  • Clearly distinguish between ownership and jobs, but do not go overboard by being unduly tough on an heir apparent.
  • Communicate and revise the trust and other agreements to cope with advancing age, marital status, involvement, health, and the like.
  • Establish an exit strategy, such as a Texas Shootout, which allows one partner to set the price for his or her half of the business and the other partner to either buy or sell at that price.
  • Employing spouses offers substantial benefits, including participation in business travel, the company pension plan, health plan, and Social Security. But roles and compensation for spouses must be well defined, recognizing that other family members and employees will notice every scintilla of preferential treatment.
  • Assess your strengths as the business grows; if running the business day-to-day is not your forte, consider hiring an outside CEO or general manager.

Developing an ongoing relationship with your financial institution and a family business forum is well worth the effort. No corporate job can compare to a well-run family business when it comes to flexibility, financial reward, and an opportunity to work with people whom you know, love, and trust.

Source: The Wilmington Trust

Buy-Sell Controls Value of Medical Practice in Texas Divorce

by bvertz on May 5, 2010 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Texas has once again proven itself to be a haven for the affluent divorcee. In Mandell v. Mandell, 2010 WL 1006406 (March 18, 2010), the Texas Court of Appeals held that a professional spouse’s 25% interest in a medical corporation was limited under the terms of a buy-sell agreement to a nominal fixed price payable to shareholders upon divorce. The decision was summarized at BVLaw Blog as follows:

In a case of first impression, the Texas Court of Appeals considered a buy-sell agreement that purported to bind shareholders and their spouses in the event of divorce. As a further complication, the husband had signed an employment agreement with the private medical association—but neither he nor his wife had signed the shareholders’ agreement.  This unsigned agreement limited the value of a divorcing shareholder’s interest to the equity buy-in price (in this instance, a mere $11,000 for a 25% share in a business with an estimated $3 million to $5 million book value).

I share BVLaw Blog’s incredulity, but my analysis is somewhat different.

In the opinion, the Texas appeals court emphasized that the doctor, who signed the stock purchase agreement during the marriage three years before separation, tendered a check for his buy-in but never signed the shareholders agreement (which was referenced in the stock purchase agreement); and his shares were never issued. After separation, the corporation returned the shareholder’s fixed buy-in payment. At that point, the trial court  might have held that the shares were never acquired, and only the buy-in payment itself was community property.

Yet, during the pendency of the divorce litigation, the wife filed motions compelling her husband and the corporation to complete the transaction. The doctor returned the fixed sum to the corporation, and the corporation issued the shares. When the wife attempted to introduce expert testimony to prove the fair market value of the shares, she was met with a motion in limine, which was granted. The trial court held that the wife was bound by the terms of the agreements.

In Texas, the fair market value of a business is presumed to be zero if the shareholders are contractually obligated to sell back their shares upon retirement, death or divorce. A divorcing spouse may present evidence of book value or comparable sales to rebut the presumption, but in this case, the court held that the net asset value was the property of the corporation, not the shareholders.

It might be signficant that Texas is a community property jurisdiction. Since the marital community exists throughout the marriage in those jurisdictions, it could be said that the doctor’s wife was in privity with her contracting husband when he signed the stock purchase agreement. Furthermore, property in Texas apparently cannot be owned simultaneously by one legal entity (a corporation) and another legal entity (the marital community). These principles might not apply in common law (marital property) states, such as Pennsylvania, where it might be argued that the spouses were neither in privity nor intended third party beneficiaries of such contracts, and where marital property is merely a fictitious estate rather than a legal entity.

New Case Law – Business Valuation in Divorce

by bvertz on Apr 7, 2010 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , ,

Two articles from BV Wire recently caught my attention. Both deal with business valuation in divorce cases where personal goodwill was an issue. I will post my own analysis soon. Meanwhile, here are excerpts from BV Wire’s blast email, published by BV Resources.

Med practice valuations still plague appraisers—and the courts

A trio of new divorce cases highlights the constant challenge of appraising medical practices, everything from doctors who won’t disclose their finances to those who insist their opinions should determine value. In Garcia v. Garcia (Fla. App., Jan. 20, 2010), the husband’s expert argued for a strict application of the buy-sell agreement, which would have limited his share in a successful hematology practice to a mere $45,000—compared to the wife’s expert, who used a net asset value to appraise it at $900,000. At the very least, the husband argued, the restrictive buy-sell should considerably discount the NAV (but he lost both arguments on appeal).

Or consider Amaraneni v. Amaraneni, (La. App., Feb. 12, 2010), in which the doctor claimed his interest in an urgent care clinic had no value apart from goodwill attributable to his professional qualities. But he failed to provide any financial documentation to the court-appointed expert; at deposition, he was similarly “vague” and un-responsive. His name was on the wall but the clinic wasn’t named after him. A manager supervised all the operations and staff—and the expert apportioned all goodwill to the enterprise, also confirmed on appeal.

Finally, in Dickert v.Dickert, (S.C., Jan. 11, 2010), the trial court valued the husband’s successful dental practice at $360,000, including over $255,000 of “enterprise goodwill.” In an expedited appeal to the S.C. Supreme Court, the husband argued that state law precluded any consideration of goodwill in a professional practice, due to its speculative nature. The wife claimed the current majority rule on enterprise values was the better law, but the court disagreed, finding the goodwill asset “too intangible” to support an accurate valuation.  (All three case digests will appear in the April 2010 Business Valuation Update™.)

Is this recession enough reason to devalue assets in divorce?

In Mistretta v.Mistretta (Fla. App., Feb. 18, 2010), the trial court valued the husband’s restaurant at $854,000, based on a valuation report prepared nearly a year earlier. The husband moved for reconsideration, claiming the recession caused the restaurant to lose value. The trial court agreed, finding that no one could have foreseen the severity of the economic crisis—but the wife successfully appealed. “Economic recessions, like other vagaries in the business cycle, are contingencies appraisers must take into account in valuing a business,” the appellate court held, despite a strong dissent which likened the recession to a global economic “tsunami.” The wife’s expert, Gary Trugman, obviously agrees with the majority. “The truth is, we did consider the economic downturn, because we used dual valuation dates,” he tells the BVWire™. The husband also lost on his expert’s claim that 50% of the restaurant’s value was personal goodwill. “As I said to the judge, ‘Your Honor, when was the last time you went to a restaurant if the food was lousy, the service was terrible, but the owner was a really nice guy?’ I think that got my point across, that there was very little personal goodwill,” Trugman says. “I used Pratt’s Stats data for restaurants to demonstrate what portion of the purchase price was protected by a covenant not to compete, and used that percentage to allocate some personal goodwill—but it was a relatively small figure.”

Divorce Court’s Power to Regulate Business

by bvertz on Mar 4, 2010 • Comments Closed • , , , ,

An issue that befuddles some business owners during the course of their divorce litigation is how to regulate the operation and management of their businesses. In cases where both spouses own interests in the business, they may struggle for control of important business and financial decisions.

Some issues may be resolved under the company’s partnership agreement, shareholders’ agreement, limited liability company (LLC) agreement, or corporate by-laws. Yet, these agreements are often too vague to deal effectively with disputes between divorcing spouses who own businesses together.

Early in the evolution of the Divorce Code, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania authorized the Courts to appoint receivers or trustees to prevent the dissipation of an ongoing business concern. Mayhue v. Mayhue, 485 A.2d 494 (Pa.Super.1984). The Superior Court in Mayhue held that 23 Pa.C.S. § 3505(a) and 23 Pa.C.S. § 3323(f) authorized the Courts to enter an injunction to prevent a spouse from continuing a course of conduct calculated to defeat his wife’s property rights in the business. The Superior Court in Mayhue approved the trustee’s powers to liquidate assets to pay business debts, pay delinquent taxes, and satisfy intercompany debts.

The appointment of a receiver is not practical in every case because the expense of paying a receiver may not be justified. Still, there are some cases in which third party supervision of the business might be the only practical way t0 ensure continued smooth operation of a business caught in the middle.

More on Blazer: Retained Earnings Not Income for Alimony

by bvertz on Sep 25, 2009 • Comments Closed • , , , ,

 

The California Court of Appeal’s decision in Marriage of Blazer (2009) dealt not only with double dipping, but also with the exclusion of a company’s retained earnings when determining the owner’s income subject to an alimony obligation. After a 20 year marriage, Husband and Wife divorced, the husband retaining ownership of a berry distribution business. At trial, the husband’s expert testified that the berry company was thinly capitalized for its gross revenue. Wife’s expert agreed (if not grudgingly) that some earnings must be retained for capital reserves. The trial court excluded these retained earnings from the husband’s income for alimony purposes.

The husband’s expert also testified that retailers were seeking to eliminate middlemen, forcing the business to integrate vertically. The capital expenditures to purchase a growing farm and expand distribution were not added back to the company’s income, despite wife’s argument that husband “chose” to incur those expenses and would benefit from the enhancement in the company’s value. Again, the trial court adopted the position of the husband’s expert, over the opposition of wife’s expert.

On appeal, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision under an “abuse of discretion” standard. The Court noted that there is no statutory definition of “income” for alimony cases in California, and it was unclear whether retained earnings could be properly categorized as “income” for alimony purposes. Case law held that the child support definition of “income” did not apply to alimony cases.

Buy-Sell Held Controlling Where Wife Signed

by bvertz on Sep 4, 2009 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , , , ,

The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently held that a business owner’s spouse who signed a buy-sell agreement was bound by the value in a divorce action. In Inzer (2009), the husband and wife both signed a buy-sell agreement when they formed an LLC to purchase a Sonic Drive-In franchise. The buy-sell agreement granted other partners a right of first refusal to buy the interests of a withdrawing partner for the lesser of book value or the offer procured by the withdrawing partner. The owner’s expert presented evidence that the owner’s 24% interest in the franchise was worth $120,000 to $135,000 using capitalized cash flow or market methods, but only $16,000 net book value after discounts. Wife’s expert testified to a value of more than $500,000 after making adjustments to the owners’ compensation and ignoring discounts for lack of marketability, lack of control or the restrictive operating agreement.

The trial court valued the owner’s interest at $200,000 without much explanation. The Tennessee Court reversed, holding that the franchise was worth $33,000 book value without consideration of intangible value or discounts (as specified in the buy-sell agreement). The appellate court distinguished cases in which buy-sell agreements were not controlling, since the non-owner spouse in those cases did not sign the buy-sell.

Consider whether it was appropriate for Wife’s expert to perform  Type I adjustments in his normalization of the income statement, i.e., adjusting the owners’ compensation. Could a purchaser of a 24% interest compel the other owners to reduce their compensation? Even if the Court had not held the buy-sell to be controlling, it seems unlikely that Wife’s expert would have prevailed.

Three Signs of Enterprise Goodwill in Professional Practices

by bvertz on Aug 13, 2009 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In divorce litigation where one of the spouses owns a professional practice, such as a medical practice, dental practice, law firm or accounting firm, the lawyers and their experts have to determine whether the business has value. Their determination depends upon whether the professional practice is believed to have enterprise goodwill.

Briefly, enterprise goodwill is the price that a buyer would pay for a professional practice over and above the value of its hard assets like equipment and supplies. In theoretical terms, enterprise goodwill is the reputation of the business that is not closely associated with a particular owner or professional. The opposite of enterprise goodwill is personal goodwill, which is the reputation and skill of the professional. Enterprise goodwill has value because it is transferrable but personal goodwill is not. Someone might be willing to pay for a name like Aspen Dental Systems, but what about Jane Doe, PC?

Increasingly, there is a market for professional practices that are not part of a regional or national chain. Dental practices, even those with a single location and single dentist, are bought and sold frequently. The same is true for specialty medical practics. Yet, primary care medical practices and legal practices are rarely bought or sold. So, how does a lawyer decide whether a professional practice should be evaluated by a business valuation specialist? Here are three signs that a professional practice might have value:

1. Actual transactions. If a professional or his/her partners have bought or sold their practices, it is more likely that there is transferrable enterprise goodwill. However, you must distinguish market transactions from succession planning. If the only transactions are between retiring partners and advancing associates, then there may not be much enterprise goodwill.

2.  Subordinates and equipment.  One reason why dental practices are increasingly transferrable is that dental procedures are performed by hygenists and associate dentists. If the owner of the practice is earning profit from other professionals and paraprofessionals, then a buyer might be willing to pay something to step into those shoes.

3.  Excess compensation. If a professional is earning substantially more than industry standards, then the professional’s practice might have enterprise goodwill. No buyer would pay to assume an existing practice if he or she could start a new practice for free – except if the existing practice were more profitable than a new practice would be. This criteria is based on the principle of substitution.

Executive Compensation: Excessive Salary or Disguised Dividend?

by bvertz on Aug 10, 2009 • Comments Closed • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently took up the case of Menard v. Commissioner, 560 F.3d 620 (2009), considering whether the CEO of a privately-held company was receiving a dividend disguised as salary from the business he controlled. The CEO whose salary was questioned was John Menard, founder and controlling shareholder of Menards, a chain of retail hardware and building supply stores. The Tax Court took the position that John Menard’s $20 million salary was really a disguised dividend because it was much greater than the salaries of the Home Depot and Lowe’s CEOs, who earned $2.8 million and $6.1 million respectively.

The appellate court’s opinion in this case is so well-researched that I cannot help but include large blocks of text, starting with its introduction to the subject:

The Internal Revenue Code allows a business to deduct from its taxable income a “reasonable allowance for salaries or other compensation for personal services actually rendered,”[or] “payments purely for services.” Occasionally the Internal Revenue Service challenges the deduction of a corporate salary on the ground that it’s really a dividend. A dividend, like salary, is taxable to the recipient, but unlike salary is not deductible from the corporation’s taxable income. So by treating a dividend as salary, a corporation can reduce its income tax liability without increasing the income tax of the recipient. . . As a result of a change in law in 2003, dividends are now taxed at a lower maximum rate than salaries—15 percent, versus 35 percent for salary. 26 U.S.C. § 1(h)(11). This makes the tradeoff more complex; although the corporation avoids tax by treating the dividend as a salary, which is deductible, the employee pays a higher tax. But depending on its tax bracket, the corporation may still save more in tax than the employee pays, and in that event, if the employee owns stock in the corporation, he may, depending on how much of the stock he owns, prefer dividends to be treated as salary. . . . Even before the change in the Internal Revenue Code, treating a dividend as salary was less likely to be attempted in a publicly held corporation, because if the CEO or other officers or employees receive dividends called salary beyond what they are entitled to by virtue of owning stock in the corporation, the other shareholders suffer. But in a closely held corporation, the owners might decide to take their dividends in the form of salary in order to beat the corporate income tax, and there would be no one to complain—except the Internal Revenue Service.

The usual case for forbidding the reclassification (for tax purposes) of dividends as salary is thus that “of a corporation having few shareholders, practically all of whom draw salaries,” Treas. Reg. § 1.162-7(b)(1), especially if the corporation does not pay dividends (as such) and some of the shareholders do no work for the corporation but merely cash a “salary” check. A difficult case—which is this case—is thus that of a corporation that pays a high salary to its CEO who works full time but is also the controlling shareholder. The Treasury regulation defines a “reasonable” salary as the amount that “would ordinarily be paid for like services by like enterprises under like circumstances,” § 1.162-7(b)(3), but that is not an operational standard. No two enterprises are alike and no two chief executive officers are alike, and anyway the comparison should be between the total compensation package of the CEOs being compared, and that requires consideration of deferred compensation, including severance packages, the amount of risk in the executives’ compensation, and perks.

Courts have attempted to operationalize the Treasury’s standard by considering multiple factors that relate to optimal compensation. [Citations omitted.] We reviewed a number of these attempts in Exacto Spring Corp. v. Commissioner, 196 F.3d 833 (7th Cir.1999), and concluded that they were too vague, and too difficult to operationalize, to be of much utility. Multifactor tests with no weight assigned to any factor are bad enough from the standpoint of providing an objective basis for a judicial decision [citations omitted]; multifactor tests when none of the factors is concrete are worse, and that is the character of most of the multifactor tests of excessive compensation. . . . All businesses are different, all CEOs are different, and all compensation packages for CEOs are different.

In Exacto, in an effort to bring a modicum of objectivity to the determination of whether a corporate owner/employee’s compensation is “reasonable,” we created the presumption that “when . . . the investors in his company are obtaining a far higher return than they had any reason to expect, [the owner/employee’s] salary is presumptively reasonable.” But we added that the presumption could be rebutted by evidence that the company’s success was the result of extraneous factors, such as an unexpected discovery of oil under the company’s land, or that the company intended to pay the owner/employee a disguised dividend rather than salary. 196 F.3d at 839.

The strongest ground for rebuttal, which brings us back to the basic purpose of disallowing “unreasonable” compensation, is that the employee does no work for the corporation; he is merely a shareholder. [Citations omitted.] Comparison with the compensation of executives of other companies can be helpful if—but it is a big if—the comparison takes into account the details of the compensation package of each of the compared executives, and not just the bottom-line salary. This qualification will turn out to be critical in this case.

Having explained the context of this case, the Circuit Court next explained why the Tax Court’s analysis was wrong, especially its comparison of John Menard’s salary to the salaries earned by the Home Depot and Lowe’s CEOs in that year. The appellate court first rejected the notion that the taxpayer’s $17 million bonus, which was equal to 5% of the company’s net income before taxes, was more likely to be a dividend than salary because it was paid at year’s end; was approved by a board that the CEO controlled without outside directors; must be returned if the IRS should disallow the company’s tax deduction as salary; and exceeded the salaries earned by the CEOs of publicly-traded competitors (Home Depot and Lowe’s). The appellate court noted that the managers of privately-held companies often face greater risk than public companies, warranting greater reward for success:

Of particular importance to this case is the amount of risk in the compensation structure. Risk in corporate compensation is significant in two respects. First, most people are risk averse, and the scholarly literature on corporate compensation suggests that risk aversion is actually an obstacle to efficient corporate management because managers tend to be more risk averse than shareholders. Shareholders can diversify the risk of a particular company by owning a diversified portfolio, but a manager tends to have most of his financial, reputational, and “specific human” capital tied up in his job. [Citations omitted.] So the riskier the compensation structure, other things being equal, the higher the executive’s salary must be to compensate him for bearing the additional risk.

That is not a critical consideration in this case because, as we said, management and ownership in Menards are not divorced. But a second significance of risk in a compensation structure is fully applicable to this case. A risky compensation structure implies that the executive’s salary is likely to vary substantially from year to year—high when the company has a good year, low when it has a bad one. Mr. Menard’s average annual income may thus have been considerably less than $20 million—a possibility the Tax Court ignored. Had the corporation lost money in 1998, Menard’s total compensation would have been only $157,500—less than the salary of a federal judge—even if the loss had not been his fault. The 5 percent bonus plan was in effect for a quarter of a century before the IRS pounced; was it just waiting for Menard to have such a great year that the IRS would
have a great-looking case?

The appellate court also noted that the Tax Court had not considered the total compensation packages of the CEOs from the public companies, such as equity compensation, severance packages, retirement plans, and perks. The appellate court noted that the CEO of Home Depot, whose salary was used as a benchmark, actually earned $124 million over six years, and a $210 million severance package when he was forced out. The Court of Appeals also noted that the Tax Court had not considered the salaries of other senior managers, both of Menards and of the benchmark public companies, which may have indicated that this CEO was more productive and delegated less than average. The Court observed that John Menard worked 14 to 16 hours per day, six to seven days per week.

The Seventh Circuit adopted a skeptical, even sarcastic, tone toward the Tax Court’s remark that the owner of a business has no need for incentive compensation because ownership is incentive enough. The Court of Appeals held that owners should not be treated differently from other managers.

Having concluded that John Menard’s $20 million salary was not excessive, the Court of Appeals reversed.