Carla S. Nunes, CFA

Carla S. Nunes, CFA, ABV is a Managing Director in the Office of Professional Practice of Kroll (previously Duff & Phelps). She has over 25 years of experience. In that role, Carla provides firm-wide technical guidance on a variety of valuation, financial reporting and tax issues. In addition, Carla is the Global Leader of Kroll’s Valuation Digital Solutions group, which produces cost of capital thought leadership content and data housed in the Cost of Capital Navigator.

In 2011, Carla completed a one-year rotation in Kroll’s London office, where she promoted the firm’s IFRS education efforts and marketing initiatives, as well dealing with IFRS implementation issues.

Prior to these roles, Carla was part of the Valuation Advisory Services business unit, performing engagements primarily for financial reporting and tax purposes at Kroll’s predecessor firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Standard & Poor’s, and Duff & Phelps.

Carla has conducted numerous business and asset valuations for a variety of purposes, including purchase price allocations, goodwill impairment testing, M&A, corporate tax restructuring and debt analysis. She has been involved in multiple valuation assignments for a wide range of industries, including pharma & biotech, healthcare, vitamin retail, specialty chemicals, industrial manufacturing and gaming & hospitality. Carla has substantial experience with cross-border valuations, working with multinational corporations to address complex tax, international cost of capital and foreign exchange issues.

Carla is one of Kroll’s experts addressing valuation issues related to cost of capital. She authored a chapter titled “Cost of Capital for Divisions and Reporting Units” included in the 4th and 5th editions of the textbook Cost of Capital: Applications and Examples (2014), by Shannon Pratt and Roger Grabowski. She was also a contributing author to the chapter “Risk-free Rate” in the 5th edition. In addition, she is a co-author of the Duff & Phelps Valuation Handbook series (published annually between 2014 and 2019), now available exclusively online in the Kroll Cost of Capital Navigator, which she also co-created. Carla is a co-author of the 2021, 2022 and 2023 updates of the Valuation Handbook – International Guide to Cost of Capital: Summary Edition published by the CFA Institute Research Foundation. She also co-authored a chapter for The Art of Valuation, published by The Appraisal Foundation and a chapter titled “Cost of Capital for Companies in Distress” included in the eBook Valuation for INSOLvency Practitioners, published by INSOL. Carla was a co-author of the Kroll’s “ESG and Global Investor Returns Study” (2023) which examined the relationship between historical returns of over 13,000 publicly traded companies across a variety of geographies and industries and their ESG ratings to determine the correlation of ESG ratings to company performance. She also co-authors Kroll’s annual U.S. and European Goodwill Impairment Studies.

Carla is a frequent speaker in webinars, conferences, and top business schools on the topics of cost of capital, the economy, ESG/sustainability, goodwill impairment, and valuation in general. Carla has recently completed her term as Practitioner Director in the Board of the Financial Management Association (FMA) International and she is a member of the Education Committee of the International Institute of Business Valuers (iiBV), the Financial Reporting Committee (FRC) at the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the ESG Working Group at the IVSC Standards Review Boards. Carla is also a board member of the Simon Women’s Alliance, and she was a Fellow of the (now-sunset) Kroll Institute.

Carla received her MBA in finance from the University of Rochester’s Simon School, an honors degree in business administration from Lisbon’s School of Economics and Management (ISEG Lisbon) and completed coursework (50%) for a Masters of Taxation from Villanova University School of Law. Additionally, she holds a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, an Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) credential, and passed the exam and fulfilled all the requirements for the Certified in Entity and Intangibles Valuations (CEIV) credential (now-discontinued). Carla also holds an ESG Executive Certificate for Financial Professionals Program awarded by The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.