The new “Business Valuation Professional Note” from EXPERTsuisse

An overview

Expertsuisse has just published its new “Special Notice on Business Valuation”. It is recommended for company valuations after July 1, 2022.

Why a new technical communication on business valuation?

Unlike an audit, a business valuation is not a recurring and plannable mandate. Nevertheless, the necessary expertise must be up to date and the tools must be available. This is an ideal topic for Expertsuisse’s specialist work.

This has a long tradition. The first technical bulletin on the subject of business valuations dates back to 1994 and was revised in 2008. There, the focus was still on the process of a valuation and reporting, not the value calculation in the narrower sense. The “Fachmitteilung Unternehmensbewertung von kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU)” (Business Valuation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises), which was adopted in 2018, was intended to provide guidance for SMEs in particular.

This still young pronouncement was positively received in interested circles – i.e. by companies, consultants, auditors, but also by the tax administration and jurisdiction. The question soon arose as to whether and to what extent the principles described there for the valuation of SMEs could also be applied in other cases. This was also because – unlike in Germany or Austria – there is no binding standard for the profession to which reference can be made for valuations of larger or listed companies.

This was the reason to extend the scope of the Professional Note and to cover the valuation of larger companies with the new “Professional Note on Business Valuation”. For the valuation of SMEs, this does not result in any significant changes, at most clarifications.

Read the full article from EXPERT FOCUS June|2022 here (in German or French).