The M&A industry is going strong, with no signs of slowing down. In today’s fast-paced market, M&A pros are looking for a leg up on the competition and seeking ways to maximize investment returns. Products and services that give dealmakers the upper hand are highly sought after. Here’s our updated annual look at the tools transaction professionals count on to help them source and close deals, organized into 9 categories.

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4. VALUATION SERVICES
With nine U.S. offices and a 40-year history, Valuation Research Corp., known as VRC, calls itself one of the oldest and largest business valuation companies in the U.S. “We are a fully independent valuation firm, as we are not part of an accounting firm or investment bank, which means our clients enjoy specialized expertise and few conflicts,” says VRC managing director Jeff Miller. “We work with the fund itself or the portfolio companies, and offer experience across all major industries. And we can handle every valuation need – from fairness opinion to purchase allocation to stock-based comp and impairment – throughout the life cycle of the investment.”

The need for independent valuation services is increasing for the same reasons that fund administration services are on the rise. “There is increased audit scrutiny, and more pressure from the limited partners to have third-party valuations,” says Miller, who expects the pressure will continue to increase. “We also do positive assurance, and reviewing of firms’ internal valuations, and are seeing more private equity firms reaching out for third-party valuation support.”

VRC is seeing growth in purchase allocations for M&A in the middle market, and an increase in deals to take public companies private. “PE fund management groups are also continuing to set up new or additional credit funds, and we’ve been valuing many more of these debt positions, as well as increased support of daily-NAV mutual funds for their investments in such private companies as Uber,” Miller says.