LOS ANGELES, California – September 29, 2009 – Houlihan Lokey announced today the launch of a dedicated Transaction Advisory Services Group which will provide clients with comprehensive financial and tax due diligence services as they evaluate acquisition or investment targets. This service enables clients to benefit from:

• an increased understanding of significant patterns in the historical performance of the target business.
• a thorough evaluation of  the quality and sustainability of the reported earnings and free cash flow of the target business.
• an assessment of the achievability of the target business' financial forecasts.
• an understanding of the key tax and financial reporting risks in purchase agreement negotiations.
• an evaluation of the post-closing purchase price adjustments.
• consideration of the effects of purchase accounting and valuation requirements in post-transaction financial models for recently acquired businesses.

The Group will be led by Sam W. Clark, Managing Director in Houlihan Lokey’s Dallas office. Commenting on the service expansion, Mr. Clark said, “We intend to draw on our transaction expertise from our leading M&A advisory practice to assist clients in executing deals that will help create shareholder value. We have established ourselves as a leading advisor in Tax & Financial Reporting Valuation Services. The addition of transaction due diligence services to our platform enables us to provide our corporate and private equity clients with independent advice starting at the earliest stages of a transaction through to the purchase accounting valuation analyses and ongoing impairment testing.”

Jack W. Berka, Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Financial Advisory Services, commented, “We have always explored new ways to leverage our experience and existing capabilities to meet the needs of our clients. We’re excited to add transaction due diligence to our robust—yet specialized—suite of services and bring new value to our clients.”

As part of this expansion, three new executive hires join Houlihan Lokey as Senior Vice Presidents in the firm’s Dallas office. Jack Elliott, most recently with Celanese Corporation and Brian Sipes, most recently with Flowserve Corporation, were previously directors of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s Transaction Services practice. Travis Pittman was most recently a partner at the Lockton Companies, LLC and previously provided transaction due diligence services at KPMG LLP and Deloitte & Touche LLP.