Valuation and Assets Services, an international valuation and financial consulting firm, says it is poised to establish a presence in the country.

“This will be in the form of partnerships and affiliations with established practitioners in the valuation profession,” Mr. Kweku Boison, founder and managing principal, told B&FT.

The firm, he said, specialises in valuation of business assets as a service to financial institutions, lawyers and accountants.

It provides multi-disciplinary valuation and financial consulting services which include Plant, Machinery and Equipment Valuations; Inventory Appraisals; Business Enterprise and Intangible Assets Valuations; Business Real Estate Valuations; Cost Segregation Studies; Transaction and Risk Advisory; and Machinery & Equipment Brokerage.

Mr. Boison said the valuation profession in Ghana is dominated by experts in land valuation; but as the economy grows and contracts become much more sophisticated and exacting, there is need for specialized valuations to support the transactions -- whether in mergers, acquisitions or litigations.

He pointed out that most valuation practitioners in Ghana have a narrow specialization in land and land improvements, and often engage mechanical engineers to assist them with valuations of plants, machinery and equipment.

“But mechanical engineering and valuation are separate disciplines, and without the appropriate training the engineer may not utilize the appropriate value premises in the valuation and may not identify the market nuances impacting the asset,” he said.

He advised financial/lending institutions and all users of valuation opinions to engage valuers certified in that class of assets. “For example, it is not in the interest of lending institutions to rely on reports of engineers who are not certified as valuers. The engineers are not obligated to comply with the ethics, rules and standards of any professional valuation body.”

Mr. Boison said Valuation and Assets Services’ practices are dictated by standards and ethical rules of the professional bodies to which the firm’s associates belong.

He said the firm has the resources to provide companies with reports, analyses and opinions that they need across a wide variety of markets, products and industries which will also hold up to the scrutiny of lenders, insurers, tax authorities, the courts and other government agencies and third parties.

The firm’s inventory services include providing appraisals for retail inventory, wholesale inventory, and manufacturing inventory. “Our business and intangible asset valuations provide an unbiased third-party value of a business or intangible asset that is a reliable basis to use for buy-sell transactions, purchase price allocation, partnership and corporate dissolution,” he said.

Valuation and Assets Services’ associate real-estate valuers have over 25 years of experience valuing complex commercial and industrial properties as well as specialized assignments such as condemnation and right-of-way valuations.

The financial consulting services of the firm include providing field examination services to financial institutions in the area of surveys and recurring examinations.

Valuation and Assets Services was formed in 2004 and has resources and expertise to provide services in both national and international locations. The firm has been engaged to value assets located in Australia, Canada, Middle East and the United States.

The firm’s valuers maintain their designations as Accredited Senior Appraisers (ASA), Certified Machinery and Equipment Appraisers (CMEA), and Certified Public Accountants (CPA).

Mr. Kweku Boison has been invited as guest-speaker by financial institutions to speak about machinery and equipment appraisals as it relates to lending institutions. He was also a presenter at the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA) and the Institute of Business Appraisers’ (IBA) 2012 Annual Consultants' Conference June 20-23, 2012 at Dallas, TX.

He is a regular contributor to accounting and appraisal (valuation) journals and is also an adjunct instructor at a Washington DC college, where he teaches financial accounting and auditing.