By Shawn Hyde, International Society of Business Appraisers (ISBA) –
Lots of people have a series of letters behind their names. These are designations that indicate specific training and education. There are several different sets of letters from different organizations that one can obtain in the field of business valuation. The following describes a little about each of them and their most commonly awarded designations.
Business valuation, as an industry, began being organized in the United States in 1978, with the Institute of Business Appraisers (IBA) and a man named Ray Miles. Prior to then, practitioners were valuing businesses, but there were no collections of authoritative texts or industry experts. In the early years of this industry, certain stars began to shine and publish books to share their expertise with the rest of us. I am speaking of names such as Shannon Pratt, Jay Fishman, Robert Reilly, Robert Schweihs, Gary Trugman, and Chris Mercer. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but just those whose names are on the spines of most of the books in my library. (more…)