Merger and acquisition activity is running at a feverish pace in the US, abroad, and across national boundaries. As industries continue to consolidate and globalize, mergers and acquisitions will remain at a high level, if not accelerate. This course combines financial, legal and governance perspectives in order to more fully understand the process and objectives of mergers and acquisitions. Finance theory is centrally important to understanding business objectives, tax considerations, securities laws, and governance implications in change of control transactions. A sound understanding of the transactional
process in mergers and acquisitions requires a fundamental ability to apply the concepts of finance theory to important topics such as target valuation, takeover motives, takeover financing, managerial entrenchment, takeover defenses, takeover tactics and pricing, cross-border-issues, and antitrust questions.
In mergers, acquisitions, the devil is in the details—accurately assessing the value of the deal, managing the complex process of bringing it to a close, and then making the combined business work. The success of a merger or
acquisition lies in your ability to get your hands around the very slippery issues of valuation, risk, integration, and understanding your downside exposure.
Through a series of discussions and real-life case studies, the managerial, economic, and financial bases for mergers, acquisitions will be examined in the course. Methods for determining a company’s value, risk, and the price that should be offered for the selected target are explored in details.

Student will understand the reasons why acquisitions succeed and fail. They will also experience in working through potential deals from start to finish, including information gathering, negotiations, and the due diligence
process in the final team project.

In sum, the major goals of the course are :
1. to foster strategic thinking and perspective. For most issues there are no right "answers”, only reasoned judgment
2. to analyze the human motivations and economic/political forces which cause business combinations at particular times