Valuation approaches for corporate investments and takeovers with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)

Business appraisals happen daily in enterprises listed on the stock exchange. However, there are many occasions where economists need to evaluate companies, such as in lending, in business investments, in the sale or transfer of companies or in tax reasons (estate duty).

In this Bachelor Thesis, different methods will be presented and discussed. In view of limited financial resources and dynamically changing global market, companies must finance innovations and investment rationally and under the aspect of sustainability.

In the increasing global competition and the associated need for internationalization, economists have developed different models over the last three decades. In this work, the focus is on the evaluation of SME. Here will be a special on function-oriented appraisal systems (such as the discounted cash flow method, etc.).

In the literature, for example, economist still poorly consider the knowledge management as a factor for evaluation, although the knowhow in increasing global competition (e.g. in relation to the Asian markets) is becoming more and more a strategic factor.