“Time is money,” Benjamin Franklin once famously said, creating one of the most enduring adages in the American business world.

The cliché, of course, refers to the opportunity cost of lost time and to the ideas that costs are incurred as time passes and that revenue cannot be generated through idleness.

A key take-away from the phrase is this: the longer something takes in the process, the more it costs.

Specifically in cases that involve liquidating a company’s assets, an equally important corollary comes to mind: the longer it takes to liquidate an asset, the lower the recovery will be.

 Performing tasks in parallel rather than in sequence is a method often used by healthy businesses to get more done sooner. 

This same method of operating works in adverse situations, too.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

A DLOM’s basic premise is that shares of a closely held corporation cannot be readily sold on a public market and therefore should be discounted to reflect the additional risk factors associated with the time and difficulty of finding buyers for non-publicly traded shares.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

Inadequate and defective documentation of ownership interest in a business is an all too common feature of closely held businesses and, after a dispute arise, litigation over an assert claim by adversely effected business partner’s standing (right) to sue is challenged.

The reasons for this state of affairs are many and diverse, e.g.:

• The owners lack a sophisticated understanding of the legal formalities involved in an ownership interest in the chosen form of business entity.
• The owners are unable or unwilling to spend the money for necessary legal and accounting services.
• The owners are family members or long-time friends who trust one another and believe they don’t need any written agreement or certification of ownership interests.

These circumstances should not deter you from investing in the required documentation. Make sure you get the proper documentation and protect your interest.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

More than two years later, W received a voicemail message that stunned her: H wanted to revise their settlement. W refused, and H sued.

When the couple split their assets evenly, the largest chunk of money was invested with Mr. Madoff. H kept much of his funds in the Madoff account, which was held in his name. W, who said she had no interest in investing with Madoff, received her settlement proceeds in cash.

Shortly after Madoff admitted wrongdoing in December 2008, H, filed court papers to drastically alter the terms of his divorce settlement.

W, he argued in the lawsuit, should be required to turn over millions of dollars that she had received in their settlement to make up for the substantial losses he had sustained in the fraud. H began arguing that he and W were mistaken about the existence of the account. “There was in fact no account and no securities or other assets,”

A ruling in this case would only have a direct effect on New York’s laws, but a decision by the influential court could influence how judges interpret laws in other states.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com



Charitable and campaign donations given through the Rothstein Family Foundation, including $800,000 to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, $1 million to Holy Cross Hospital, and $90,000 to the Republican Party of Florida, which was already turned over to the U.S. government.

These recipients of Rothstein’s largess, mostly in Fort Lauderdale and Broward County may be exposed to and subject to The Bankruptcy Trustee’s power to recover and recapture payments made that can be traced as proceeds from the ill gotten funds. Various theories of law may be applied to achieve this result similar to those being considered in the Madoff case. Please related article in The South Florida Business Journal.