COURSE NUMBER:  EW236E.11

COURSE TITLE: M&A: Successful investing across the company life cycle

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2

INSTRUCTOR: Christian Puscasiu

E-MAIL ADDRESS: cpuscasiu@gmail.com

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (HTTP URL): bSpace

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Saturday , 9AM-12PM

PREREQUISITE(S): Completion of core required

CLASS FORMAT: case/lecture

REQUIRED READINGS: case studies and articles, some parts of books

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: CLASS VIDEO

The purpose of this course is to develop an intuitive and quantitative approach to buying or selling a business. Most studies show that the majority of corporate acquisitions destroy the buyerŐs value. This course identifies points of leverage, examines the motivations of stakeholders, and outlines tactics to create value when businesses get bought or sold.

The courseŐs mission is to offer an experience-based curriculum in order to help students create shareholder value and avoid costly pitfalls in future acquisition initiatives.  Similarly, the course offers insight as to how to maximize value when selling businesses. The course aims to help students:

1.     Develop judgment: By sharing lessons distinguishing practices that create value from those that result in loss, the students should develop intuition and pattern recognition in M&A activities.

2.     Understand and set up good governance: Many erroneous actions and outcomes can be traced back to faulty governance set-ups; proper governance through strong alignment of incentives and controls is critical to driving sustainable value creation.

3.     Build acquisition negotiation and related skills: The student will examine how to perform proper due diligence, closing processes and tradeoffs inherent in doing a deal.  After the transaction has been completed, we examine how to establish a win-win scenario with the top managers of the acquired company to drive performance.

While not all students will necessarily lead company acquisitions and sales, most will encounter restructurings, mergers, spin-outs and other corporate reorganizations as part of their business careers.  Being able to understand the deal process, the forces and motivations around the activities, and ultimately drive value creation should prove helpful in their success.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Mr. Puscasiu has been a private and public equity investor for more than 15 years as founder and as Partner across all different stages of a companyŐs life from seed investing to growth equity to leveraged buyouts, IPOs and public block investing and finally turn-arounds and restructurings. He is the founder and general partner of Three Bridges Ventures, a seed fund focusing on early enterprise platform technology companies. Prior to that he lived in Germany and was a Partner at EQT, one of EuropeŐs premier investment firms with over 15 billion EUR under management, having led the German team of the Opportunity Fund and the Munich team of the Expansion Capital fund. Before EQT, Chris co-founded Prides Capital, which focused on small and mid-cap public and private investing, and led its private equity practice. He started his investment career at AEA Investors in New York and also spent a few years at Blum Capital in San Francisco.

 

Among his more notable investments, he led Blum CapitalŐs investment in CB Richard Ellis, the worldŐs largest commercial real estate services company which involved becoming the largest public shareholder, then taking the company private in a public proxy contest, acquiring its largest competitor and then taking the company public again. Mr. Puscasiu also led the refinancing and restructuring of Pegasus Solutions, the worldŐs leading hospitality IT company and was the interim-CEO of Sanuwave which was his spin-out from Healthtronics Inc. At EQT we led the financing of EQTŐs largest public buyout of Securitas Direct right during the financial crisis and also conceived of and led the consolidation of nine digital media agencies to form United Digital Group in Germany. He also had to restructure a number of companies to ensure their survival including SmarteCarte, TitanX and Strauss Innovation.  As an active ŇangelÓ investor in early technology companies, he currently serves as the Chairman of System Insights and as a board member of 21Diamonds and Contacts+.

 

Prior to his investment career, Mr. Puscasiu was a consultant with Bain & Company in San Francisco, a software engineer with Geoworks in Berkeley, and an entrepreneur. He received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. HeŐs a former member of the Cal tennis team and an avid marathon and ultra-marathon runner.