The Expert Podcast

so how can you find the assets for a company or for corporation or even any kind of business enterprise. first of all check out our website active Intel dot com it'll give you good information about doing asset searches where the records come from also put some notes in the comments below about why you might need an asset search for a corporation. corporations hold assets just like individuals do they can own real estate you can have bank accounts you can have vehicles you could have equipment some businesses also have inventory or materials that they used to manufacture products those are all assets. businesses also have other types of assets which are intangible or intellectual property like patents trademarks websites. customer lists what they call goodwill are blue sky for that business. you wanna know about all those if you're looking to find assets for a company it's for a reason it's because you either have a judgment against them you want to sue them you're getting into litigation or you have some type of recovery you want to make and you want find out where your money's coming from. so running an asset search on that business is important. how do you find all this well each type of asset has a different place to look for example real estate you can look in the county recorder's office not the tax assessor don't make that mistake but the county recorder and we'll show all real estate owned by that corporation. vehicles can be searched with the licensing division department of motor vehicles it'll show what vehicles are owned by that corporation and you have to file certain release form with the DMV to have that information given to you. one good thing about commercial records as opposed to individual records many states require that a corporation also lists their insurance on their vehicle record because they want to make sure that companies have proper liability insurance. so you can get the name of the insurance company and the insurance agent which may come in handy later. what about bank accounts what you could do a bank account search for a corporation the same way you do it for a private party for a civilian consumer. now instead of having their so security number you will need the tax ID number the E. I. N. number for that business. you may have to search for that first before you run the bank account search. you also need to have the exact corporate name as it's filed in the records. sometimes companies go by a shortened version of their name or like a trade name or product name you want to get the actual legal entity name from at the secretary of state or whoever hands out corporations in your jurisdiction. that and the tax ID number and you can run a bank account search. what about inventory and materials how do you search for those items. well many times those items are scheduled there listed on a balance sheet. now that balance sheet if you have an adversary relationship with the company they're not just going to hand it to you however there are three or four third parties who also have that balance sheet or that inventory list. it may be the insurance agent that we talked about earlier it may be a vendor or supplier that has their inventory as a listed sold to that client. it may be an accountant's it may also be a lender many lenders require that a company post their assets as collateral for loans. if this loan is done as a UCC filing universal commercial code found on the U. C. C. one many times those are posted a public records. and it will list the inventory what the pledged assets are sometimes it'll even give you other locations you didn't know about. so find those UCC filings to look for inventory the next type of asset is an intangible asset or intellectual property and certainly patents trademarks fall under that category but you can search for USPTO of the U. S. patent and trademark office federal government has the online version of that. some companies have patents and trademarks but beyond that the most valuable things that are I should say most common are normal everyday things like the website for that company the trade name for that company they may have a DBA doing business as name filed even their phone number is an asset. if they have a phone number they've used for ten years and everybody knows that number to call in to make orders they probably don't wanna lose that phone number. so if you sue them and make sure you get good legal advice from an attorney before you do it of these steps and even asset searches you want to get legal advice from an attorney the phone number might not be that valuable to you but it's incredibly valuable to the debtor so if it's at risk of being seized even though you can't really use it to make a lot of money the debtor probably doesn't want to lose it. we had cases where a client had a claim against the debtor ran the asset search there wasn't a whole lot of assets but they did have a phone number and website they got a lot of traffic a lot of phone calls and the debtor stood their ground they said I'm not paying you too bad you're out the money. well our client the creditor filed a motion with the court to have those two things seized and transferred to them and what they did was they set up a lead collecting line for that business and they collected leads and sold to a competitor. well after about two weeks so that the debtor found a way to come up with the money and buy them back. because the last thing you want is all your clients going to a competitor. so that's a reason why intellectual property is a good thing to look at even if you don't think it's worth a whole lot of money obviously as a creditor you just want to find a big fat bank account we can just scoop out cash that's great maybe you'll find that a bank account search but these other searches many times find information that's just as valuable sometimes a more valuable. the other thing that can happen is if you seize the website you also have access to emails and once you have those emails you can go back to the history and maybe you'll find the balance sheet. maybe you'll find prior financial statements that were sent or received attached files PDF files. so seizing the email sometimes will get you the information in another way. if you can't you may have to go to court to get a court order.
what other types of assets well there's also an asset called blue sky meaning that some companies have a company valuation bigger than the book value. so if you take up all their tangible assets and inventory and real estate cash in the bank subtracted debts and let's say it leaves a million dollars there's many companies that have a imputed value higher than that because of sales that can be capitalized and amortized and that book value or or that blue sky value you may not be able to cash it out but the debtor doesn't want to lose it either. so you can look at in that industry what is the standard rate of multiplier of revenue to come up with a company value because that's cash flow like an annuity. have questions about running an asset search on a corporation check out our website or leave your comments below and we'd be glad to be of assistance.