Eric W. Nath, ASA

Eric Nath has been valuing interests in private companies since 1985, first with the trust departments of Wells Fargo and Bank of America, then as Bank of America’s Valuations Director in the Mergers and Acquisitions division. He founded Eric Nath & Associates in 1991 and incorporated it as an LLC in 2002.

Throughout his career Eric has specialized in researching, studying, understanding and valuing fractional, non-controlling, illiquid and non-marketable interests in private businesses. He was appointed by the San Francisco Superior Court as a partition referee, and based on this experience has also become one of the foremost experts on valuing undivided, fractional interests in real property.

Eric has been a Senior member of the American Society of Appraisers in Business Valuation since 1992, a Director of ASA’s San Francisco Chapter from 1993 to 1998, and its President from 1996 to 1997. Eric was an elected Member of ASA’s Business Valuation Committee from 1995 to 1998.

As a proponent of real-world based analysis rather than theoretical analysis Eric is a well-known author and speaker on topics of private minority interest valuation issues. He is often cited as one of the groundbreakers in debunking control premiums and minority interest discounts, and has been a leader in advocating forward-looking rate of return studies. In connection with this work, since 1998 Eric has been a continuously serving member of ASA’s Business Valuation Standards Sub-Committee. He was the principal creator and author of the only comprehensive guidance by any appraisal organization on the valuation of partial ownership interests: “Procedural Guideline 2 – Valuation of Partial Ownership Interests”. Eric shepherded this guidance through six years of exposure drafts and vetting, and in 2009 it was officially incorporated into ASA’s Business Valuation Standards. He is now actively involved in the redesign of ASA’s BV Standards to bring the valuation of minority interests and ASA’s business valuation standards into the modern era and to make them more relevant and useful for practitioners, the public, regulatory bodies and the courts.

Eric holds a Masters of Business Administration in Finance and International Studies (1982), and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning (1976), both from the University of Washington. Eric earned a certificate in Mediation from the University of California at Berkeley, and has completed all the coursework in the Appraisal Review and Management discipline for ASA.