Regional accounting and advisory firm, Brown Schultz Sheridan and Fritz (BSSF), has launched a business valuation and litigation support consultancy.
The firm announced this month that it partnered with Carli Lehr, a certified public accountant and valuation analyst with over 16 years of experience providing business valuation services, to lead as the director of its new consulting firm, BSSF Valuation and Litigation Consulting.
“By partnering with Carli on BSSF Valuation & Litigation Consulting, we are expanding our capacity to help clients in an area of need that continues to grow,” said Ken Wolfe, president and managing principal at BSSF. “Since Bruce Brown formed this practice many years ago, it has thrived. I look forward to its continued success under BSSF Valuation & Litigation Consulting as Carli works closely with Bruce and the team at BSSF.”
Along with her experience in business valuation, Lehr brings assurance, audit, tax planning, tax compliance, business consulting and finance experience to BSSF’s new consulting firm.
BSSF provides accounting, assurance, tax and consulting services from its offices in Camp Hill, Hanover and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as well as Frederick and Westminster, Maryland. The firm employs 130 team members.
“I am excited for this partnership with BSSF,” said Lehr. “The firm has a history in our region of providing excellent business valuation and litigation support services, and I am looking forward to continuing and growing that tradition while serving our clients.”
There seems to be a false notion floating around – and we all buy into – that somehow, we’re going to get everything in order tomorrow. That tomorrow, when we wake up, it will be the perfect day, where we will have ample time for the planning and legal work needed to minimize risk in the future.
We talk a good game, but that’s not what happens. Life is messy and full of distractions.
Today will not go as planned. So, what was planned for tomorrow remains undone for yet another day. I’m not referring to mundane tasks. I’m referring to the heavy lifts in business around succession, governance and transition that most owners just do not want to tackle. There is always tomorrow, they say, until there’s not.
As a family business owner, it’s critical to understand there are events that will affect the transition of your business. In fact, one out of every two reading this blog will be impacted by an event beyond your control. And if you haven’t run through the checklist to prepare your business, you’re not only putting the business at risk, but your family as well.
Think all this is a bit dramatic? Below are REAL situations I’ve witnessed over the years:
Owner/husband died under the current shareholder agreement, but his wife remained a minority shareholder even though she worked every day by his side.
No insurance in place for the employees to buyout the family and continue the business.
No succession plan because the owner stubbornly remains the hub despite failing health.
Yes, we talk a lot about the 5Ds – Death, Disability, Divorce, Distress, and Disagreement – with good reason: all business owners will exit their business, yet only half will do it on their terms. The other half will scramble.
And, by the way, a 5D event doesn’t have to happen directly to you to disrupt the business. Think about the fallout if it involved:
A key member of leadership team; tribal knowledge gone and no documentation exists.
Ownership member and the shareholders agreement is out of date.
Family member owner who can’t step away to grieve or care for a loved one.
Begin by adopting the mindset of “my business is always for sale” (and, actually, that’s the way it should be.)
Working with the mindset that your business is always ready to be sold means:
You’ve got great financials.
You play in a growing market.
You have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
You have limited customer concentration.
You have customers who repeat and refer.
Your business generates cash like a spigot vs sucking it out like a drain.
You’ve got a strong cash balance and balance sheet.
The business doesn’t rely on you as the owner.
You have good governance in place, with an ownership council, a board of directors, a family constitution, and a family council.
Tom Garrity. PHOTO/PROVIDED
All these things will not only make your business successful today, but attractive to potential buyers as well, including internal successors. Ultimately, building a business that’s transferable means that it can run without you and that’s also the best way to survive one of these 5Ds.
Do the right things – the hard things – to position your business for whatever life throws your way. It will be more financially successful, more fun to operate and will better protect those you love.
Life is messy, but the future of the business doesn’t need to be. Make the commitment to tackle one “what if” today and check it off your list so it’s done.
Tom Garrity is managing partner at Compass Point Consulting LLC in Hanover Township, Northampton County. He can be reached at [email protected].
The president and CEO of Hamilton Health Center will transition to a consulting role in the next steps in the center’s executive leadership succession plan.
In early 2022, Jennine Peterson will focus on developing and enhancing strategic partnerships and overseeing Hamilton’s new capital campaign.
For more than 20 years, Peterson’s leadership and vision have been the driving forces behind Hamilton’s growth and success, said Michael Harris, chairman of the board. During her tenure, Peterson stabilized and grew the organization’s financial position and developed and expanded the 17th Street medical mall campus, resulting in more than $35 million investment in the South Allison Hill section of Harrisburg.
She also received Ambulatory Health Care Accreditation and Certification as a Primary Medical Home (the “Gold Seal”) from the Joint Commission and opened facilities outside of Harrisburg in northern Dauphin and Perry counties, Harris said.
“On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Jeannine for her outstanding leadership and deep commitment to our community, especially Hamilton’s patients and staff. I am thrilled to announce that our partnership with Jeannine is not ending, rather she is transitioning her focus to new initiatives: Workforce Development and Food Insecurities Programs, and a new 2-story 30,000-square-foot building on our 17th Street Campus to co-locate and expand services for women and children, including space for daycare services for children of staff and others in the community,” Harris said.
“We will need to raise $16 million to fund our renovation and expansion plans for our 17th Street campus and develop new and enhance existing partnerships to achieve the audacious goals of our Strategic Plan,” Harris said. “No one is more experienced, more qualified or capable of successfully achieving these initiatives than Jeannine!”
This month, Hamilton will launch a nationwide search for a new CEO to lead Hamilton into the future.
The former owner of a Harrisburg consulting firm pleaded guilty this week to defrauding a fund that provides employee benefits for the union representing state university faculty.
Michael Buchanan, former owner and operator of Actuaries Consultants and Administrators Inc., admitted in U.S. Middle District Court to overcharging the fund, which was established by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties to provide union members and their families with benefit plans. The overcharges totaled $1.49 million over a 10-year span.
The Pennsylvania Faculty Health and Welfare Fund paid Buchanan’s now-defunct firm for processing vision and dental claims. Between 2007 and 2017, Buchanan routinely inflated the amount of claims the firm received and instructed his employees to do the same, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The trust fund paid the firm $5.20 for each vision claim and $8.10 for every dental claim. The firm counted everything from returned x-rays, denials of claims and referrals to consultants as separate claims.
Buchanan, now living in Fishers, Indiana, plead guilty to one count of health care fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and $250,000 in fines.
A date for Buchanan’s sentencing has yet to be set. He and his attorney were not immediately available for comment.
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