Who may sign the valuation report

A deliberate independence requirement

The framework specifies that the valuation report must be prepared by a statutory auditor or a certified accountant, but it explicitly excludes the professional who already handles the company's usual accounting or audit work. This is not an oversight, it is the point of the requirement.

The reasoning is that a professional who prepares the company's annual accounts on an ongoing basis has an existing relationship with the shareholders and management that could, even unintentionally, influence a valuation prepared for their own benefit.

Why the usual accountant is excluded

An accountant who books the company's transactions throughout the year is well placed to explain the figures, but that same closeness is precisely what the independence requirement is designed to set aside for this specific exercise. The valuation needs a second, separate professional judgment.

This separation also protects the shareholder in a practical sense. A report signed by someone outside the usual advisory relationship carries more weight if the valuation is later questioned, precisely because it was not produced by the party with the closest ongoing interest in the company's figures.

What qualifies as a statutory auditor or certified accountant

Both statutory auditors and certified accountants are regulated professions in Belgium, subject to professional standards and oversight by their respective institutes. Either qualification satisfies the requirement, as long as the individual is not already the professional handling the company's regular accounting or audit engagement.

In practice, this often means engaging a firm that has no prior relationship with the company, rather than simply asking a different individual within the existing accounting firm to sign the report.

Organising the engagement in practice

Shareholders typically need to provide the annual accounts and the shareholder register to the independent professional preparing the report. From receipt of these documents, a draft report is generally produced within a period of a few weeks.

Choosing the professional early, rather than at the last moment before a transaction, allows time for questions about the company's figures to be resolved without pressure on either side.

The independence condition applies to the whole engagement

It is worth noting that independence is not a one-time check at signature. The professional preparing the report should not have an ongoing advisory role with the company during the engagement either, to preserve the separation the requirement is built on.