Undergraduate Course: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring (BUST10149)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring course will provide you with the necessary skills to understand the strategic potential and limitations of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring activities such as divestitures, their value creation potential, as well as the role of markets and institutions within the same framework. The course is designed to provide you with the necessary grounding in theory, as well as applied and organizational skills, to demonstrate that you will be successful in related career paths. |
| Course description |
The course aims to deliver the most important issues on Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring such as corporate divestitures. In particular, the course aims to develop your ability to critically understand and evaluate issues such as:
- Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring activities, the role of the business cycle in the economy and also the stock market development, in causing Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring activities.
- Regulatory and strategic considerations, takeover tactics, and takeover defences.
- Motives for Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring.
- Target firm and foreign target firm valuation.
- Issues developed through information economics that contribute on the negotiation and re-negotiation stage of corporate reforms such as M&As and divestitures.
- Empirical tests on the performance of merging and divesting firms at both the announcement- and the post-merger or integration period.
- Cross-border (cross-industry) acquisitions and their main differences with domestic (focused) ones.
The course relies on knowledge acquired from the Introduction to Corporate Finance or Principles of Finance courses in year 2 and covers the most recent developments from theoretical and empirical perspectives of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring.
Outline Content
The course will cover the following over ten two-hour sessions
- Introduction and overview of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring Activities, waves, and their theoretical perspectives.
- Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestitures strategies - Motives, implications, and alternative perspectives.
- Target (foreign target) and divesting firm valuation.
- Valuation of synergies.
- Structuring corporate reforms and negotiations - Paying for the target firm & the investment banker perspectives.
- Value creation from M&As and Divestitures - Methods and evidence.
Student Learning Experience
You will have to read the core textbooks that will support the learning outcomes of each topic/lecture, and also most of the additional references/readings that will accompany each topic. The weekly lectures will explore particular aspects of the course and the additional readings will attempt to help you put material in context, which will not substitute the core reading.
During lectures you will be asked to be active, completing exercises and discussing issues with your fellow students. In any case, the nature of the material means that in most cases there is not a single acceptable answer. The important aspect is that you are able to argue on a case and present compelling evidence to back your argument.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students must have at least 4 Business courses at grade B or above. This MUST INCLUDE at least one Finance course at intermediate level. This course cannot be taken alongside BUST08030 Introduction to Corporate Finance or BUST08003 Principles of Finance. We will only consider University/College level courses. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
50 %,
Coursework
50 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
50% Group project (including 25% peer evaluation using WebPA)
50% Written Exam (Individual)
|
| Feedback |
Formative: Feedback will be provided throughout the course.
Summative: Feedback will be provided on the assessments within agreed deadlines. |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours & Minutes |
|
| Main Exam Diet S1 (December) | | 2:00 | |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Critically understand the principal theories, concepts and principles of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring.
- Show detailed knowledge and understanding on, and also critically challenge, the valuation principles, the assumptions, as well as the practices of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring.
- Demonstrate detailed knowledge on target (and foreign target) valuation, as well as on the estimation of the synergies arising from Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring.
- Demonstrate detailed knowledge (and ability to critically discuss) the various methodologies aiming to quantify value creation from Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring, as well as critically discuss the literature on factors related to value creation from such corporate activities and rationalise success potential.
- Critically review and consolidate knowledge, skills, practices and thinking of the ways in which the negotiation of the various terms of Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructuring is developed and structured.
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Reading List
Required:
DePamphilis, D., 2019. Mergers, Acquisitions, and Other Restructuring Activities, 9th Edition. Academic Press.
Recommended:
Sudarsanam, S. 2010. Creating Value from Mergers and Acquisitions: The Challenges, Prentice Hall - Pearson.
Arzac, R.E., 2008. Valuation for Mergers, Buyouts and Restructuring, Wiley. (Important for topics 3 to 6).
Additional readings (academic papers) will be suggested in the course of the lectures. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Cognitive Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Be self-motivated; curious; show initiative; set, achieve and surpass goals; as well as demonstrating adaptability, capable of handling complexity and ambiguity, with a willingness to learn; as well as being able to demonstrate the use digital and other tools to carry out tasks effectively, productively, and with attention to
quality.
Understand how to manage and sustain successful individual and group relationships in order to achieve positive and responsible outcomes, in a range of virtual and face-to-face environments.
Communication, ICT, and Numeracy Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Convey meaning and message through a wide range of communication tools, including digital technology and social media; to understand how to use these tools to communicate in ways that sustain positive and responsible relationships.
Knowledge and Understanding
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of contemporary organisational disciplines; comprehend the role of business within the contemporary world; and critically evaluate and synthesise primary and secondary research and sources of evidence in order to make, and present, well informed and transparent organisation-related decisions, which have a positive global impact.
Identify, define and analyse theoretical and applied business and management problems, and develop approaches, informed by an understanding of appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques, to explore
and solve them responsibly. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Zhehao Jia
Tel:
Email: Zhehao.Jia@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Leah Byrne
Tel: (01316) 513758
Email: lbyrne4@ed.ac.uk |
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