Continuing Professional Education on Business Valuation & Litigation
Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 1:00 – 3:00 PM ET
Hitchner’s Annual New Year BV Update
Speakers: Jim Hitchner CPA/ABV/CFF & Harold Martin, CPA/ABV/CFF, ASA, CFE
Webinar Description:
- Are you behind in your reading?
- Is your new year’s resolution to review that stack of publications on your desk?
- Are you still unsure about many valuation issues?
This webinar will help you keep that resolution, clear that clutter, and update you on new issues in business valuations. We will only present what we believe to be some of the most important pieces of BV information from 2025. This will include only NEW concepts, data, models, and methods in such areas as the income approach, cost of capital, inflation, growth rates, the guideline company transactions method, the guideline public company method, discounts and premiums, reports, BV standards, poll results, expert testimony, and implications of artificial intelligence on valuation.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will learn the following:
- How will artificial intelligence impact valuation?
- AI-related securities claim class action suits
- Good and bad AI disclosure language
- Cost of capital benchmarks chart updated
- Alternative rate of return data
- What is the new Damodaran “Bot”?
- When valuing a minority interest, can you value the company on a control basis and not apply a DLOC?
- New viewpoints
- Current issues in the valuation of pass-through entities
- Is USPAP the only generally accepted appraisal standard?
- What the Business Valuation Resource Panel exposure draft entitled “Is the Busines
- Appraiser You Intend to Hire Competent for the Assignment?” is all about
- The best models for determining the cost of equity
- Allocating personal goodwill for divorce
- Court rejects double dip in Iowa divorce case
- Discounting non-operating assets
- How does the Discount for Lack of Control affect liabilities?
- New ideas on engagement letters
- How to handle personal guarantees in debt
- Iterative debt and equity to determine capital structure
- Quantifying key person discounts
- Working with attorneys
- Use of closed-end funds – a new perspective
- New DLOM chart
- Disproportionate distributions and S corps
Handouts:
- VPS Webinar slides
- Various related articles
- Publication citations
- Following the webinar, attendees will have access to a video recording of the program
About the Presenters:
James R. Hitchner, CPA/ABV/CFF
Jim Hitchner is managing director of Financial Valuation Advisors www.finvaluation.com and is president of The Financial Consulting Group www.gofcg.org. He is also CEO of Valuation Products and Services (VPS) www.valuationproducts.com.
Mr. Hitchner is editor/coauthor of the books the Hitchner Pratt Fishman Consensus View Q&A Guide to Financial Valuation and the VPS DLOM Guide and Toolkit, published by VPS. He is also editor/coauthor of Financial Valuation Applications and Models (FVAM), fifth edition; Financial Valuation Workbook (FVW), fifth edition; and Valuation for Financial Reporting: Fair Value, Business Combinations, Intangible Assets, Goodwill, and Impairment Analysis, third edition, all published by Wiley. FVAM and FVW have been adopted by the AICPA for its five-day Business Valuation School. These two books are also used by the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (“NACVA”) for its three-day Advanced Business Valuation course. NACVA also uses the Discount for Lack of Marketability Guide and Toolkit as part of this course.
He has spent over 44 years in valuation services, including as a shareholder with Phillips Hitchner Group, partner-in-charge of valuation services for the Southern Region of Coopers & Lybrand (currently PricewaterhouseCoopers), and senior appraiser with American Appraisal Associates. In the valuation area he has coauthored over 20 courses, taught over 60 courses, published over 150 articles, and has made over 400 conference and webinar presentations.
He is also an inductee in the AICPA Business Valuation Hall of Fame and a two-time recipient of the AICPA’s Business Valuation Volunteer of the Year award. He was also one of the four original members of the AICPA Business Valuation Standards Writing Task Force and served for the entire six years, up to the June 2007 official release of the standards.
Harold G. Martin, CPA/ABV/CFF, ASA, CFE
Harold is a managing director for the Financial Consulting Group, LLC, and a director and former partner-in-charge of the Valuation and Forensic Services Practices. He is also an adjunct faculty member of The College of William and Mary Raymond A. Mason School of Business, where he teaches forensic accounting in the Master of Accounting program.
He has over 40 years of experience in valuation and forensic services, public accounting, and financial services. He has appeared as an expert witness in federal and state courts, has served as a federal court appointed forensic accountant for receiverships, and has served as a court-appointed neutral business appraiser. He is an inductee into the AICPA Business Valuation Hall of Fame and is also a two-time recipient of the AICPA Business Valuation Volunteer of the Year award. He is a former member of the AICPA Business Valuation Committee, former commissioner of the AICPA National Accreditation Commission, former editor of the AICPA ABV e-Alert, and former editorial adviser and contributing author for the AICPA CPA Expert. He has taught over 50 AICPA courses on valuation and forensic accounting, including AICPA National Business Valuation School, AICPA BV Exam Review Course, and AICPA Expert Witness Skills Workshop. He created and served as chair of the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants Forensic & Valuation Services Conference.
He is a coauthor of Financial Valuation Applications and Models, 1st–5th eds. And a contributing author to Cost of Capital: Estimation and Applications, 2nd–4th eds.
Continuing Professional Education on Business Valuation & Litigation
Jim Hitchner’s Valuation Products and Services (VPS) provides tools to assist practitioners in business valuation, litigation services, and forensics and fraud.
Valuation Products and Service, LLC is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be addressed to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, TN, 37219-2417. Web site: www.nasba.org. Some online programs sponsored by VPS are administered by the Virginia Society of CPAs. For more information regarding CPE, refund, complaint, program cancellation or other policies of the Virginia Society of CPAs, visit vscpa.com/CPEPolicies or call (800) 733-8272.