From the Chair

I have just returned from a very successful co-located conference at the Arizona Biltmore. We had about 375 people at the Advanced BV Conference and another 300 at the International Conference. The BV sessions were excellent, as always, and the joint networking sessions, along with the joint educational sessions, were very well received. For those of you who were unable to attend, the conference sessions were all recorded and will be available for sale soon. If you are interested in purchasing an audio recording of any or all of the sessions, let me know, and I will make sure you receive the ordering information as soon as it is available.

I owe a great deal of thanks to the hardworking conference committee who were as follows:

In addition to this hardworking group of people, a great deal of thanks also goes to Lisa Perry of Meeting Creations, the BVC’s conference planner, who takes care of all of the logistics of the conference. Our conference would never run so smoothly without all of her hard work and dedication.

Next year’s conference will be held at the Marriott RiverCenter in San Antonio, TX from October 14 to 16. Since it was so successful this year, the conference next year will again be co-located with the International Conference. Make sure to put it in your calendar so you don’t miss it. Meanwhile, I am working on forming the conference committee and starting to generate ideas for conference topics and/or speakers. So, if you want to get involved (there is still a spot or two open) or have ideas, please send me an e-mail.

On the Sunday before the conference, the Business Valuation Committee met. We were honored to have various members of ASA’s Executive Committee join us, as well as Allister Byrne (President and CEO) and Brian Keough (Chair of the Board) of the CICBV (Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators). In addition to updates from these individuals, we were also updated on the status of the IIBV (International Institute of Business Valuers), the IVSC (International Valuation Standards Council) and The Appraisal Foundation.

On things closer to home, we spent a great deal of time on education and strategic planning. The education subcommittee is hard at work updating and revising the POV courses and reformatting them to work in a classroom or an online environment. The Budget and Finance Committee and the Board of Governors of ASA have approved the funding for online courses, so the BVC is moving full-steam ahead to get courses online as quickly as possible.

As a first step in the online education initiative, Roger Grabowski will be hosting his Cost of Capital course on November 1-2. Although this course will ultimately be available on demand, this is the first step in moving our online courses forward. Roger’s class has always been popular as he goes in-depth into the various components of the cost of capital. If you’ve never had the chance to take his class in person, you now have an opportunity.

The strategic planning subcommittee, in particular the marketing task force, has been hard at work and everyone at the conference got a sneak peak of the first draft of the marketing tool kit which we expect to roll out to the membership in January. Meanwhile, this very active group continues to move forward with other initiatives that we hope will help our members and other interested groups. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you informed as we continue to make progress.

So that’s it for this month. It was great meeting so many of you in Phoenix and I’m looking forward to seeing all my new BV friends next year!

Linda Trugman, ASA
Chair – BV Committee