Mike Pilgrem gets to the nub of disagreements between experts
When parties with a commercial dispute head for the courts, they may each instruct a financial expert—an accountant, business valuer or economist—to act as a witness on their behalf. Those experts often disagree, but the question is: why?
It is a question that is asked by the financial experts themselves, the litigators and, if things do not settle, the court. Some might simply assume that the experts have succumbed to the pressures of litigation. In my experience as a British accountant, the answers reached by the people directly involved in the process rarely support that view. When they do, this inevitably comes to the court’s attention and is reflected in the outcome.
When one financial expert is provided with an expert report to the court from another the key questions are: “Do we disagree? If so, why?” First, headline conclusions are identified, and then analysed to see what is underpinning them. Each explicit or implicit assumption will be identified and its source, nature and basis investigated. Questions will be posed such as: “Does it come
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