Integrating success factors and group attitudes into the valuation of a company

In the process of valuation of a company usually a number of experts work together in a team. The valuation formulas are usually based on several financial figures like the expected discounted cash flows and the expected cost of capital. But it is also based on an evaluation of the success factors, which are the causes of economic prosperity of the company. Especially in the new market or in the e-business these soft criteria determine the value of the companies. In this paper a Comparative Company Approach (CCA) based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Saaty, 1990) is suggested. A company has to be compared to its competitors according to the predetermined criteria – especially the success factors. The results of this kind of bench-marking process are the relative values of the companies included in the investigation. The general method and the aggregation of individual benchmarking results will be described mathe-matically. The new idea is to use AHP as a basis for a Comparative Company Approach: Knowing the results of the AHP-benchmarking and the monetary value of the competitors (e.g. stock capitalization) it is possible to calculate a range of estimates for the monetary value of the company considered.