William A. Johnston

Bill is a Managing Director of Empire Valuation Consultants, LLC and has been with Empire since 1994 . He earned his M.B.A. in Finance from the Stern School of Business at NYU and holds a BS in Finance and International Business from Pennsylvania State University.

Mr. Johnston is an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) of the American Society of Appraisers and was one of the first recipients of the ASA’s intangible asset designation. He has seventeen years of experience in business and intangible asset valuations. He has managed and performed numerous valuations for financial reporting purposes, including purchase price allocation, goodwill impairment testing, and cheap stock (ASC 718/409a). He currently serves as Treasurer on the ASA’s Business Valuation Committee and is past President of the ASA’s New York City Chapter. He also chaired the first national conference co-sponsored by the ASA covering financial reporting valuations. Mr. Johnston also has acted as a guest lecturer at Fordham University, speaking on the topic of intangible asset valuation. He has taught a Center for Advanced Valuation Studies (CAVS) course on purchase price allocation (SFAS 141) and impairment testing (SFAS 142, SFAS 144) for the ASA, as well as its BV301 and BV302 Intangible Asset valuation classes, and has spoken at various ASA events on the topic of purchase price allocation valuations. Mr. Johnston is also a member of the Appraisal Issues Task Force (AITF) and currently serves as Empire’s chairperson for its Technical and Standards Committee.

He has valued the equity, debt, options/warrants, carried interests etc. of publicly and privately held businesses for financial reporting, acquisitions, stock repurchases, lending, estate and gift tax reporting, re-capitalization, litigation, fairness opinions and general corporate planning purposes. He also has a significant amount of experience valuing technology companies, hedge and private equity funds, and early stage businesses. Mr. Johnston has served as an expert witness on a business valuation matter in New York State Supreme (Civil) Court. Mr. Johnston also has experience valuing foreign companies located in Canada, Bermuda, Europe and Asia.