Steve Garber is the founder and managing partner of 2131 Valuation Advisors and works almost exclusively with Finance Scholars Group. He is based in the San Francisco bay area. Steve has over 30 years of experience providing valuation consulting, valuation opinions and expert testimony to more than 900 clients in the dispute, transactional, financial reporting, employee ownership, restructuring, and tax arenas.
Steve has provided expert testimony in federal and state court, bankruptcy court, and binding arbitration. He has performed entity-level valuations and valuations of the equity and derivative securities, debt, and assets of privately-held and publicly traded companies. Steve has significant experience valuing companies in a variety of industries, including: technology and telecommunications; internet and e-commerce; software; computer systems integration and security; retail and restaurant chains; financial services, mutual funds and professional money management; architectural and engineering services; distributors and wholesalers; health care related; manufacturing; and government services.
Steve was formerly a Managing Director at FTI Consulting for 10 years, where he was on the firm’s Transaction Advisory Services’ Valuation Steering Committee and Fairness Opinion Committee. Previously, he was a Partner for over 12 years at Willamette Management Associates, an independent, national valuation firm where he served as the director for two of the firm’s regional offices (San Francisco and Washington, D.C.) and opened the San Francisco office in 1997. He was also a senior vice president for Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, a middle market international investment banking firm, focusing on valuation issues. Prior to pursuing a career in business valuation, Steve worked as a financial consultant for Shearson Lehman Hutton and as a senior management consultant with Peat Marwick (now KPMG).
Steve has served on the advisory board of Parkway Capital Investors, LLC and the advisory committee of the VALCON 2010 valuation in bankruptcy conference.
Education
Steve has a Bachelor of Engineering Science degree in bioengineering from The Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Science in Industrial Administration (MBA) from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst professional designation from the CFA Institute and the Accredited Senior Appraiser professional designation of the American Society of Appraisers.