Business Valuation and Litigation Services Conference (E1909240)

Jim Agar practices in the Forensic, Litigation and Valuation Services section of the firm’s Financial Advisory Services group. With more than 25 years of experience, Jim specializes in fraud and forensic accounting, shareholder and partnership disputes, securities and antitrust litigation consulting, and commercial-dispute party advisory, expert witness testimony, and arbitration, among other services.
Mr. Agar’s extensive background includes a broad range of forensic disputes, and controversy issues including investigations; asset identification and recapture; post-mergers and acquisitions working capital, earn-out, material adverse change, and representation and warranty disputes (including advisory services to buyers and sellers and ”neutral” services to both parties); contract compliance; accounting and audit malpractice allegations; asserted wrongful terminations; and many others.
His clients include large and boutique law firms and entities of various sizes from multiple industries including automotive manufacturing and distribution, alternative investments, pharmaceuticals, energy, commercial real estate, insurance, and consumer products.
Previously, Mr. Agar served as a Disputes and Controversies Director for the Northeast region of a Big Four firm, where he also served as a national co-director for post-M&A dispute services; altogether, he has more than 15 years of Big Four/Five/Six experience. Earlier in his career, he directed a gubernatorially-ordered fraud, waste, and abuse investigation at a major quasi-public entity; was an Associate Director of Restructuring for the post-petition Enron Corp.; managed a key component of the then-largest alternative dispute resolution process in U.S. history; and was a financial statement auditor for several years.
Mr. Agar is a frequent speaker on topics such as post-mergers and acquisitions disputes, “Accounting for Lawyers,” and emerging issues in litigation services and economic crime.

Robert A. Bonavito is the managing partner for Robert A. Bonavito, CPA A Professional Corporation. Robert has studied finance and business valuation at Harvard University, along with earning a Bachelors from Montclair State University and his MBA in finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University. This formal education combined with over 30 years of experience as a forensic accountant has provided him with the opportunity to investigate, prepare reports, and testify in more than 2000 cases.

Robert’s education and experience led to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) requesting that he help develop and become a subject matter expert for the Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) exam. The CFF exam is widely considered the most important credential a forensic accountant can obtain in the United States and throughout the world. Robert was one of a small group of forensic accountants selected as the original developers, writers and reviewers for the exams.

He has been appointed by many judges and appeared in most counties throughout New Jersey. In addition, he has been retained nationally on many complex legal matters. Robert has consulted and testified for both plaintiffs and defendants. He has testified in mediations, arbitrations and appeared as an expert witness at many trials for both criminal and civil matters. His testimony includes business valuation, Eichleay Formula calculations, fraud examination, matrimonial issues, damage assessment, lost profits calculations, shareholder disputes, malpractice actions, intangible valuations, mergers & acquisitions, criminal assets seizures, NJ Conscientious Employee Protection Act (NJ-CEPA) and sale of businesses.

Bill is a Deloitte Financial Risk and Advisory Partner. Bill specializes in financial instruments and transactions valuation, accounting, and risk management. He leads Deloitte’s Financial Instruments Audit Valuation practice, overseeing all derivatives, MSR and securities valuation specialists as they support Deloitte & Touche’s audit practice.

Bill was also a trader at a global investment bank, where he traded a variety of credit products. In that capacity, he traded credit default swaps, bonds, interest rate swaps, and options. Bill is a CPA in California and New York, is a CFA Charter holder, and holds both the FRM and Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) designations. Bill serves as Deloitte’s representative on the AICPA’s Financial Instruments Valuation Taskforce and serves on the AICPA’s Financial Reporting and Forensic & Valuation Section Executive Committees. Bill is a principal author of Deloitte’s Securitization Accounting guide.

John Ferro is a highly experienced financial advisor with 36 years of valuation, investment banking and litigation consulting experience. John is the National Leader of the Board Services Practice. He has performed valuations for private equity firms, mergers and acquisitions, shareholder disputes, financial reporting, estate and gift tax, tax compliance, bankruptcy, litigation purposes and fairness opinions.

He has served as an arbitrator and has served as an Expert Witness in domestic and international arbitration disputes, jury trials and bankruptcy proceedings. Founder of the Grant Thornton Center for Shareholder Disputes. As an arbitrator, he has resolved disputes related to claims in excess of $125 million.

Before joining Grant Thornton, Mr. Ferro founded the investment banking practice at FTI Consulting, Inc. Prior to FTI, Mr. Ferro was with a Big 6 Accounting Firm for 18 years, serving as a Worldwide Partner and the Managing Director in charge of the Technology, Media and Communications Corporate Finance Group in the U.S., a practice he founded and developed.

Philip Matthews is a Manager at Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP with over 8 years of experience in dispute and litigation engagements including forensic accounting and financial investigations, trading data analysis, FCPA investigations, bankruptcy cases and fraud analysis. With a focus on risk assessments, and compliance audits related to fraud and corruption; Philip was responsible for the design, development, and implementation of anomaly analytics, analysis of the financial data for strategic insights, development of interactive visualization dashboards, and the development of a proprietary end-to-end anti-fraud management platform.

Bjørn joined MPI in 2003 and is currently a Partner working out of the firm’s headquarters in Princeton, NJ. He has been involved with complex valuation assignments associated with a wide variety of client engagements. Bjørn specializes in financial modeling and valuation analysis of privately-held and venture-backed enterprises, illiquid and thinly-traded financial instruments and complex securities for the purposes of corporate planning, transaction advisory, financial reporting and tax compliance. Particular areas of focus include the healthcare, life sciences and financial services industries.

Prior to joining MPI, Bjørn was a business analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York City. In this role he was responsible for business system re-engineering and performance measurement analysis in order to streamline macro process flows.

Mr. Pumphrey has over 10 years of experience performing business enterprise valuations, purchase price allocations, impairment analyses, and the valuation of claims within complex capital structures for public and private companies under IRC §409A, ASC 350, ASC 360, ASC 718, ASC 805, ASC 820, and ASC 852.

Mr. Pumphrey has presented on financial reporting topics at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Forensic & Valuation Services Conference, the New York City American Society of Appraisers’ Fair Value Conference, and the Philadelphia American Society of Appraisers’ Business Valuation Seminar. He has also served as an instructor for the American Society of Appraisers (on intangible valuation provisions relating to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) and has guest lectured on valuation topics at Drexel University.  

Mr. Pumphrey holds a bachelor of business administration degree in finance and real estate from Temple University. He also holds the designations of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA), issued by the CFA Institute and the American Society of Appraisers, respectively.

Mohamad Said is a Senior Manager at Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP with over 14 years of experience in data science and analytics. He helps organizations turn large volumes of data into actionable insights to deter, detect, and monitor fraud risks. He has advised global clients on cross-border investigations, fraud risk assessments, and other legal inquiries using machine learning and data-driven anomaly detection. This includes building predictive models to risk entities and transactions in various countries. Mohamad also leads innovative ventures where he helps clients leverage AI and cognitive solutions for supply chain, inventory shrinkage, and retail loss prevention.

Willard C. Shih is a shareholder on the Business and Commercial Litigation team at Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, P.A. and a member of the firm’s Management Committee, concentrating on professional liability and responsibility litigation and other commercial disputes. In his litigation practice, Mr. Shih represents businesses and individuals in complex commercial disputes, including cases involving corporate and partnership disputes, unfair competition and consumer claims, trade secrets, restrictive covenants, and a variety of other matters. He also represents closely held corporations in cases in which the owners have disputes pending in family court and probate court, as well as family members involved in estate disputes. Clients include those in the public sector, Fortune 500 and smaller publicly-traded companies, and family owned business across a variety of industries, including biotech, finance, and retail.

Mr. Shih is committed to serving the legal profession. Appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court, he has served on multiple panels and committees including its Civil Practice Committee, Rules of Evidence Committee, and the Dispute Resolution Committee. Charged by the New Jersey Supreme Court with investigating and adjudicating wrongdoing by attorneys, Mr. Shih also served as Panel Chair of a Fee Arbitration Committee and as Vice-Chair of a District Ethics Committee.

In the community, Mr. Shih is a legal advisor and former Deacon of Legal and Community Affairs for the Rutgers Community Christian Church. He has also served as an elected officer and board member of the Asian Pacific American Lawyer’s Association of New Jersey, and as co-chair of its Professional Development Committee. At Wilentz, he is co-chair of the firm’s Diversity Committee.

Adam is a Managing Director with nearly 20 years of valuation experience. He has performed valuations of businesses, business interests, intangible assets, economic damages, derivatives, and lost profits. His experience includes preparing valuations for a wide range of purposes including financial reporting, litigation support, corporate planning and consulting, mergers and acquisitions, estate and gift tax reporting, and employee stock ownership plans.

From 2013 to 2015, Adam served as a practice fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) specializing in fair value issues. In that role, he worked on projects with the FASB, the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF), the Private Company Council (PCC), and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and performed extensive outreach with regulators, other standards setters, and accounting and valuation professional organizations.

From 2015 to 2017, Adam was the Technical Director of Business Valuation Standards for the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) and worked with the IVSC Standards Board to develop an updated and improved version of the International Valuation Standards. In his position, Adam worked with other technical staff to write two new chapters and revise the existing chapters of the International Valuation Standards. Publication of the revised standards was completed in January 2017.

Adam received his B.A. in Business and Economics with a Minor in Accounting from the University of California, Los Angeles.

David B. Smith is a Partner in the firm’s Forensic, Litigation and Valuation Services Group. David has provided client service for over 30 years in the areas of forensic accounting, economic damage analysis, and business valuation. David’s experience includes disputes involving shareholder actions, real estate investments, breach of contract, business interruption, tortious interference, breach of fiduciary duty, usurpation of corporate opportunity, class actions, insurance claims, patent infringement, construction claims and divorce proceedings.

David has testified as an expert witness in excess of 25 times in both state and federal courts on a wide variety of disputes. As a certified appraiser, he has prepared hundreds of valuation reports for shareholder disputes, diminution of business value, breach of contract, gifts and estate, sales and acquisitions and divorce proceedings.

As a speaker and author on forensic matters, damages, valuation and, David has lectured at Rider College and given presentations to the New Jersey Law Journal In-House Counsel Forum, New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education, American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) New Jersey, National Business Institute, NJSCPA Litigation Support/Damages Conference, and American Inns of Courts, among others. He has published articles with the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, AAML New Jersey, and the National Business Institute. He is currently a panelist on the Supreme Court of New Jersey’s District VIII Ethics Committee. Prior to joining the firm, he spent over a decade providing accounting and litigation services, while at both an international accounting firm and a litigation consulting firm.