Mergers, Acquisitions, and Other Restructuring Activities, Eighth Edition

Book Preface

The dynamism of today’s global economy requires corporations to restructure  their businesses to remain competitive. This restructuring entails activities ranging from mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to divestitures and spin-offs to reorganization under the protection of national bankruptcy laws. Against this backdrop, this book attempts to bring clarity to what can be an exciting, complex, and sometimes frustrating subject. Intended to help the reader think of the activities involved in mergers, acquisitions, business alliances, and other types of corporate restructuring in an integrated way, M&A activities are discussed in the context in which they occur.

This book is unique in that it is the mostcurrent, comprehensive, and cutting-edge
text on M&A and corporate restructuring available. It is current in that it includes many of the most up-to-date and notable deals (e.g., Facebook’s takeover of WhatsApp, the Dell privatization, and Verizon’s mega buyout of Vodafone’s share of Verizon Wireless), precedent setting judicial decisions (e.g., efforts to overturn defenses at Airgas and Sotheby’s), new regulations (e.g., expediting backend mergers), trends (e.g., increasing role of activist investors in takeovers), and new tactics (e. g., two-tiered poison pill) employed in M&As. Most integrative case studies are new for this edition and involve transactions that have been announced or completed since 2013. It is comprehensive in that nearly all aspects of M&As andcorporate restructuring are explored. It is cutting edge in that conclusions and insights are anchored by the most recent academic research, with references to more than 200 empirical studies published in leading peer-reviewed journals just since 2012. And the substantially updated content is illustrated with numerous practical exhibits, case studies involving diverse transactions, easy-to-understand numerical examples, and hundreds of discussion questions and practice exercises. The highlights of the new edition are listed here:

• New Chapters: Two new chapters: Chapters 9 and 14. Chapter 9 discusses the basics of applying financial modeling methods to firm valuation and assists the reader in understanding the power (and limitations) of models in analyzing real world situation. Chapter 14 illustrates how complex financial models often are used to support the deal structuring process during M&A negotiations.

• New Cases: Ninety percent of the nearly 40 case studies are new and involve
transactions announced or completed during the last 3 years. These cases represent friendly, hostile, highly leveraged, and cross-border deals in 10 different industries, involving public and private firms as well as firms