COURSE NUMBER: EW236E.11
COURSE TITLE: Mergers & Acquisitions
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, 9:00AM-12:00PM, 10 week course
Class # |
Sat |
1 |
8/23 |
2 |
9/6 |
3 |
9/13 |
4 |
9/20 |
5 |
10/4 |
6 |
10/11 |
7 |
10/18 |
8 |
10/25 |
9 |
11/8 |
10 |
11/15 |
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 buyer’s 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 course’s 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 company’s 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 Europe’s 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 Capital’s
investment in CB Richard Ellis, the world’s 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 world’s
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
EQT’s 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 “angel” 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. He’s
a former member of the Cal tennis team and an avid marathon and ultra-marathon
runner.