Finding Fairness Opinion Cost

Based on some first-hand experience. Typically the big 4 prices them on an hourly basis. Analyst charge out at about $300, Associates at about $400, Managers below 500, and Senior partners below $600, with Partners over $700. Then do a budget on the number of hours on each segment of the fairness opinion, so it varies greatly on the size of the mandate (which translates to an hourly basis and so on).

Sorry couldn't be of more help.

If you are looking at post-transactions data etc, I haven't seen any disclosures where the costs of fairness opinions are stated explicitly. The closest are the PPAs that companies sometimes disclose...But on a high level, fairness opinion costs are really peanuts relative to the entire transaction value.

Thanks, really appreciate the help. My analyst was interested in knowing, I guess to see if what we charge clients is in the median range, because we are such a small bank... But thanks, I will continue looking.

Fairness opinion fees are usually disclosed in the proxy statement. Check both companies (usually the dates will be a couple months off the proposal). These statements can be pretty big so it's really helpful to know who did the fairness opinion.

The data from the proxy statements is also compiled in a couple of other places in aggregate (mergermetrics and reuters should have this data as well), so you can actually search for fairness opinion fees without digging it up.

In my experience, most fees range from 200k to 2 million dollars or so.