By Dennis Smith, CPA CExP CVA CBI
CABI President and Board Member
President’s Message
For those of you who made it to the CABI 2015 Annual Meeting on January 21, THANK YOU for coming and making our meeting a success! Choose where you would like to get more involved and make a difference: For Colorado Businesses, for CABI, and For You!
As your new CABI President for 2015, let me share this: We have an exciting year ahead for us!
CABI PLANS FOR 2015 AND BEYOND
Broker Education + More, Larger Transactions
EDUCATION: We intend to provide more “Business Broker & M&A” specific Professional Education.
- We are continuing our on-going program to certify and present to our members select IBBA Business Broker & M&A professional education courses. Kevin Waide, our 2013 Past President, led this initiative to have certain IBBA courses certified for Colorado Real Estate Commission (CREC) professional education requirements. Today, we have 16 of these IBBA courses approved and ready to go. Our purpose is to provide, locally, first-class professional education for our members, as an alternative to the inconvenience of travel to other parts of the country. Many members who have earned the Certified Business Intermediary (CBI) designation also need these courses for professional development requirements.
- We are preparing a CABI initiation course for new CABI Members. Board Member Glen Cooper is heading up the committee to design and produce this course, for release later this summer.
INITIATIVE TO INCREASE DEAL NUMBER AND SIZE: We intend to improve the efficiency of M&A Business Brokerage in Colorado. How?
- By offering CABI more and better Business Broker forms. So far, we have the following forms available to you on our Website (login here):
- CABI Instructions For Buyer Forms
- CABI Confidentiality Agreement
- CABI Confidential Buyer Profile
- CREC Brokerage Disclosure To Buyer
- CABI Co-Brokerage Agreement
- What about an Asset Purchase Agreement? What about Buyer Representation forms? What standard forms would you like to see? We’re putting our Forms Committee back to work. Our outcome is for more of our Broker Members to use similar standard forms so we are doing transactions more alike. This makes for more efficiency and promotes our Broker Members working together.
- By establishing a periodic Deal-Making Broker Forum to present and promote our deals. Last year, Al Fialkovich held several of these meeting to see how they work, and we secured US Bank as a sponsor. This Forum works! Stay tuned for our announcement of 2015 meetings. Each meeting attracted 10+ CABI members.
- By attracting more Private Equity Groups as Associate and Sponsoring members, so our members can work more closely with them. We have one Private Equity Group partner who joined CABI this month: Ahad Ghadimi, with Core Work Capital, LLP. Come to our Spring Conference on March 11 to meet him and see his presentation on how we can do more substantial transactions, together.
- By offering Outreach Presentations as education to other professionals and business Industry Groups. Past President Tom Lindahl is spearheading the Outreach Committee with a presentation for this purpose. He plans to have it available and to present it later this spring. The Outreach Committee’s purpose is to educate other Professionals and Industry Groups on the benefits of using CABI Members for Intermediary and Brokerage services.
This is what we will be doing, to increase deal number and size!
If you want to get involved in one or more of these projects, call the project’s Vice President or Committee Chair person. Their contact information is on the CABI Board Of Directors page. If you have questions for Dennis, please contact him at: dennis@a4s.com or 303-799-9111 x203.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATE
Welcome to our new Board of Directors recently elected by our Members. We appreciate your service!
Glen Cooper – Chair, CABI initiation Course Committee
Al Fialkovich – Secretary
Les Simpson – Associate Board Member
Welcome, CABI Officers, elected by our Board of Directors:
Dennis Smith – President
Merle T. Northrup – Treasurer (Continuing on).
Paul W. Chambliss – VP Communications & Chair-Website Committee (Continuing on)
Sonja Wood, VP Education – Chair-Conference Committee (Continuing on)
And Welcome continuing Board Members and Officers:
Tom Lindahl – Past President (2013-2014)
Charles Spickert – Director and Past President (2009-2010)
Have a great year. Help CABI help us work more efficiently, together.
Dennis Smith, 2015-2016 CABI President
Colorado Association of Business intermediaries
