Valuation

Energy Megatrends create volatility in the energy market. In 2024, elections, various regional conflicts, concerns about climate change, and the feasibility and marketability of various forms of energy make the valuation of “energy” a potentially tenuous endeavor. This session provides a how-to guide for five-year business plans, capital-adequacy tests and cash-flow tests across the energy industry, and discusses how to meet the bar for stress-testing under Judge Shannon’s Kravitz v. Sampson Energy decision. Retail- Douglas E. Spelfogel Jonathan P. Goulding Surbhi Gupta Hon. Thomas M. Horan Commercial Real Estate- David Levy Navin Nagrani Specialty Health Care Providers/Pharma- Stuart Neiberg David Light Kelly E. Singer Sidney S. Welch Energy- Lorie R. Beers Kenneth J. Malek Matthew W. Moran

The panelists will explore practice pointers professionals should consider when evaluating an individual’s case and assets at the pre-filing and post-filing stages, particularly if there is an inquiry from the case trustee and/or the Office of the U.S. Trustee, and the trial stage if litigation is instituted regarding an asset's value. Participants will learn about typical practice pitfalls when a debtor fails to adequately disclose and value certain assets.

This panel will present a mock trial focusing on valuation, with the panelists serving as counsel arguing each side, and as a witness and a judge. The session will cover direct and cross-examination topics that come into play with valuations, including expert witness issues, applicable evidentiary rules and procedural aspects.

This session will discuss crypto asset and exchange valuation parameters and deal structures, and how investors and analysts alike were duped by FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, to invest in his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. SBF had painted himself as an industry saint, but he now acknowledges the firm's “massive failure of oversight of risk management.” The panelists will analyze 2022's largest crypto failures — FTX, BlockFi, Three Arrows Capital, Voyager Digital and Celsius Network — and will address their crypto asset valuation parameters, forensic data sources, trading models, likely stakeholder recoveries, failures of internal controls, current and likely future regulatory controls, and corporate integrity and governance protocols in order to understand how these virtual currencies rose and subsequently collapsed.

Determining the valuation of a startup poses unique challenges, as typical valuation methodologies, such as analyzing comparable companies, precedent transactions and discounted cash flow analyses, cannot be applied with the same degree of confidence to a company that is lacking an established track record. This panel will examine these challenges and provide insights into valuing a startup from financial, legal and judicial perspectives.

This session will be divided into three 25-minute mini-panels, with each segment featuring two industry experts from the automotive, real estate and skilled nursing/senior care industries, respectively. The panelists will highlight the latest hurdles these often unpredictable businesses face in a volatile post-COVID-19 economy, including the effects of inflation, ongoing staffing and supply chain issues, potential liquidity crunches and other challenges.

This panel will focus on the current state of the capital markets and their impact on corporate refinance and restructuring opportunities. Given recent economic events, including inflation, interest rate hikes and their ramifications on the financial sectors, the panelists will discuss and explore those events and how they could affect the ability of companies to access the capital markets. The panelists also will explore how access to the capital markets could force a company to restructure or refinance existing obligations given the recent history of low interest rates and easy access to funding.

Join Mr. Pauker as he shares his perspectives on the recent turmoil in the banking and financial services industry, including what lessons can be learned by comparing recent events to those surrounding the S&L crisis and the 2008 financial crisis.

For nearly 100 years, we have not experienced a shock to the economy where large numbers of industries exhibited disastrous declines in revenues resulting from a pandemic. Frankly, none of us were equipped with readily available valuation frameworks to handle such shocking changes in cash-flow projections, discount rates, the ‘appropriate’ use of comparable companies and the relevant transactions to be used in the M&A comparable method. This panel discussion will present the main valuation parameters that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated legal and experts’ battles, mostly during and post-pandemic.