Mergers & Acquisitions Investment Banking Practicum

Catalog description

This course will cover essential fundamentals in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), building a core understanding of concepts necessary for careers in investment banking, valuation, and other related fields. Ultimately, students will leverage the material taught to present a final strategic M&A recommendation to a public company of the professor’s choosing, mimicking a classic “bake-off” scenario. Registration into the course will include an application process. The curriculum will include morning and afternoon sessions, with morning sessions providing overviews of essential core concepts and the afternoon session providing teams an opportunity to work together with periodic check-ins from the professor. Afternoon independent sessions will be guided by daily homework assignments, mirrored after key deliverables a team of junior investment banking analysts would be responsible for during an M&A deal process. The schedule will be split into four major parts. The first will focus on the mechanics of an M&A transaction, including the major checkpoints, deliverables, qualitative and quantitative considerations, and corporate strategy involved. The second will focus on the fundamentals of financial statement analysis, ratio analysis, and three-statement modeling, as well as an overview of key software tools. The third will apply the financial statements and forecasts within the context of company valuation, including both intrinsic and relative valuation approaches. Lastly, the class will discuss key areas of value creation achieved through M&A and why a deal may fail.