As BEAR’s senior business appraiser, Hans Schroeder is the developer of the proprietary system of software and integrated market data used in every BEAR valuation. Hans co‐founded BEAR in 1987, and he is a principal of Business Value Group, LLC, an affiliated company. Hans has been a business valuation analyst for over 30 years. Before starting BEAR, he was involved in systems and software development for many years, and founded several software companies in Boston, Washington, DC, and California. He authored a software system for commercial credit analysis that was used in over 10,000 banking locations and in over half of the 100 largest banks in the world. Hans has written articles published in valuation journals, and has spoken to many professional groups. BEAR has performed over 10,000 valuations in the past 35 years, about half of them for IRS purposes.