Hi Everybody,
I was just wondering what you would consider the most exciting deal of the last 2-3 years?
Im thinking about writing my final thesis in form of a case study and therefore look for ideas.
thanks
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Hewlett Packard and Dell's bidding war over 3PAR.
3PAR was trading at under $10 a share before Dell made the first bid. HP ended up paying $33 a share in the end, almost 4 times the inital value. Pretty crazy.
appreciate it. Any other ideas?
Have you already talked to your thesis advisor on potential topics? Because theses are generally on topics which pose some sort of question and seek to answer that question (test a hypothesis) through an empirical analysis/study. Not so sure a "case study" would fit that bill.
But to answer your question, the most interesting deals aren't the ones that were grand slams they are the ones that were tumbling fuck-ups... check out Deals from Hell by Robert Bruner (who is a Darden professor considered to be one of the academic authorities in the world of M&A)... he literally wrote the book on M&A (the big fat yellow Wiley Finance one).
One of the most interesting failed deals that come to mind... AOL-Time Warner. The other thing you need to focus on, is a topic that is very well studied and written on, so you have a variety of credible sources. Its not all about the sexiest deal if you're writing an academic paper.
CF/Terra was pretty interesting. Dynegy was pretty fascinating to watch as well and is still going on. Knowing some more details of your thesis would be helpful.
.
thanks for all the comments.
Its a Msc dissertation (UK). Besides classical research theses, we can also focus on a literature review, or in the special case of being supervised by professors who focus on M&A, also write a case study. The word limit is 10,000.
I will have a look at the book Marcus mentioned as well as check the amount of sources for the deals mentioned. To be honest, Im not 100% sure how a case study can be a thesis as by definition it is explanatory and not testing a hypothesis. Nevertheless, as it is allowed to do so, I think it might actually be fun to research a particular deal in detail for some months.
I think linking a deal to a more general topic i.e. M&A in scope of financial crisis or something about M&A and souvereign wealth fund / strategic resources might be a good choice to keep it a little bit more on the academical side.
thanks again for the input, very helpful.
Being UK based I'm sure you followed the Kraft/Cadbury takeover. That was interesting from a valuation, political and personal perspective given some of the initial comments made by Cadbury management.
Not sure if you need a completed takeover but Pru AIA is also interesting from a shareholder power perspective and what's happened since with the valuation of AIA.
Exxon/XTO numbers wise is quite a large deal. An oil giant investing in NA natural gas demonstrates some initiative in moving away from reliance on oil.
Both of the last two are interesting. XOM / XTO in particular because the market didn't / doesn't get it.
Cadbury / Kraft because of the politics (and valuation).
A less well known one is Candover's acquisition of Expro - bidding battle between them and Halliburton. 2008 - last hurrah for Candover before shit really hit the fan (and a PE out-bidding a strategic etc etc)
Interesting mergers to follow? (Originally Posted: 03/17/2012)
For interview purposes, should I follow one or many MorA's? Is there one you can recommend that is interesting?
Glenstrata?
I liked it!
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