With years of experience tackling tough assignments, Arch Canyon excels at valuing hard-to-value assets. Our commitment to understanding the economics behind these unique assets provides a framework to prepare supportable valuations when market quotes are thin, rights are contingent, or structures are multi-layered.

Hard-to-value does not mean impossible to value rigorously. It means the analysis must start with the contractual economics and risk — then apply methods that can be explained to a skeptical reviewer.

What hard to value typically means

These assets often lack active secondary markets, have path-dependent payoffs, or sit inside tiered ownership structures. Examples from our practice include:

• In-process litigation
• Entertainment-based IP
• Tiered entities
• Life insurance / life settlements
• Promissory notes
• Equity and debt derivatives

Each category requires a different factual foundation: claim probability and timing for litigation-related interests; rights and income for entertainment assets; waterfall math for tiered entities; actuarial and market factors for life settlements; credit and collateral analysis for notes; and payoff diagrams plus volatility and credit inputs for derivatives — always matched to the engagement purpose and available data.

When these valuations are needed

• Gift and estate tax filings involving unusual assets
• Dispute and damages matters
• Financial reporting for complex instruments
• Transactions and restructurings
• Fiduciary accountings and trust administrations
• Situations where a generalist template cannot capture the payoff structure

What we do

We prepare supportable valuations for assets such as:

• In-process litigation
• Entertainment-based IP
• Tiered entities
• Life insurance / life settlements
• Promissory notes
• Equity and debt derivatives