One of the most important and challenging decisions for safe investments any business makes is a decision to enter into a new market or expand its market presence through acquisition. However, it is quite often true that businesses do not have time, resources or expertise to structure acquisition deals in the most efficient manner. Therefore, many potential buyers would prefer to hire professional intermediaries who can help them with acquisitions. Aside from purely professional assistance, buyers can also benefit from experience and potentially useful business contacts that intermediaries have. Caspian Trading specialists have traditionally been focused on large corporations, whereas, middle-sized companies are usually somewhat overlooked by them. We offer professional services to middle-size companies. Based on our experience, expertise and contacts we offer professional consulting services to companies that plan business acquisitions. Our models and procedures are primarily tailored to companies with net worth of up to 40 million US dollars. We strive to develop practical and flexible business solutions that create added value for our clients. Conceptually, we can envision our approach as consisting of following stages:

1. Business Analysis

We assess business« operational efficiency, market exposure, and competition. We try to estimate risks, determine key success factors and uncover profit growth opportunities. This analysis is fundamental to our consulting work on acquisition deals.

2. Business Valuation

We conduct valuations based on a thorough knowledge of a company's operational activities, market position and economic environment. On the technical side, we use both comparable ratios and discounted cash flow approaches.

3. Acquisition Strategy

We work with our client together to formulate a business acquisition strategy that meets our client's goals. Key considerations include, but not limited to, acceptable price, tax advantages, and seller's policies regarding current management.

4. Negotiations

We strive to maintain constructive negotiations between buyers and sellers and to mitigate emotions arising from conflicting goals of both parties.

5. Striking a Deal

We continue to work with our clients until an acquisition deal is legally completed. We consider it very important that our client's interests be professionally represented at this important stage.

Generally, acquisition deals take between three and nine months to complete. For many business decisions, such as: developing strategic partnerships, improving management control, planning business strategies, evaluating investments and etc. it is essential to know net worth of business.

Valuation of business is usually done to:

• Provide information to external financing agents;
• Measure performance of business, when net worth of business is a key performance metric;
• Provide information to investors or to external agents in mergers/acquisitions;
• Facilitate restructuring (spin-offs, bankruptcies, etc.)

Valuation of business requires understanding of the company, its market position, the industry in which the company operates and macroeconomic environment of the business. On the technical side, we use discounted cash flow methods and market comparables to arrive at a final range of values. We also conduct risk and sensitivity analyses to formulate business development scenarios and uncover profit growth opportunities.

We will conduct valuation of your business, prepare a valuation report and help you build business strategy through forecasting methods