PE recruiting difficult question
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If the asset cost basis is higher than the equity cost basis, all else equal you would want to do an asset sale. Taxable gain for an asset sale would be $100 - $50 = $50; $50 * 20% = $10 taxes. Taxable gain for an equity sale would be $100 - $0 = $100; $100 * 20% = $20 taxes.
In practice however, there could be reasons that you would not want to do an asset sale. The one that immediately pops to mind is that if there are a bunch of contracts in place w/r/t the assets of the business, those contracts may require counterparty consents to transfer to a new legal owner of the assets, which could create a bunch of issues because those counterparties may hold up the sale process (in terms of pure timing to get consents) and may want to renegotiate terms. A solution to this might be a section 338 election (which is an equity sale but gets treated as an asset sale for tax purposes), but you can only do that in specific situations.
are these things you're expected to learn on the job in your IB stint prior to PE or things you would learn studying up - seems pretty nuanced and not all analysts would get deal experience with this
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