COURSE
NUMBER: MBA237.3
This
course is dual-listed with the EWMBA Program
COURSE TITLE: Private
Equity: Value Creation
UNITS OF
CREDIT: 2
INSTRUCTORS: Asiff Hirji and Peter
Goodson
E-MAIL ADDRESS: Asiff
Hirji- hirjia@berkeley.edu
Peter Goodson- goodson@haas.berkeley.edu
PREREQUISITE(S):
MBA203 and basic Excel skills plus Training the Street (highly recommended)
CLASS FORMAT: Combination
of lectures, cases, interactive discussion and guest speakers; Ten Sessions on
Monday nights 6 to 9 pm- dates TBA
REQUIRED READINGS: Text,
articles and cases
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
Group project presentations (oral and written), case write-ups and class
participation
CAREER
FIELD: The course is designed for those with an active interest in private
equity. Students pursuing
entrepreneurship, turnaround leadership and corporate executive management; as
well as finance and non-finance majors looking at careers in private equity,
investment banking, investment management and management consulting will find
the course directly applicable to their profession. PE firms and their portfolio companies
represent the largest clients of investment banking and consulting firms today
as well as one of the largest pools of opportunity for entrepreneurs,
turnaround specialists and executive management.
ABSTRACT
OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: The
course will focus on how the private equity industry creates value for its
investors through careful selection of its investments, financial structuring, motivated
corporate governance and driving operational improvements. Key areas of focus are: attributes that make
for an attractive investment; how potential investments valued and bid;
identifying and utilizing the main value creation levers. Additionally the course explores the human
factors: how do I convince others in deal negotiations? Sellers frequently
mislead, how do I find out the real story before I buy? How do I get the
management team aligned? How do I
motivate the line staff to drive change?
What KPI’s and incentives will drive value and performance maximizing
potential? The human factor is
significant and underappreciated.
The course is focused
primarily on management buyout deals, the largest category of private equity
transactions. In addition, strategies of value creation and risk
mitigation in growth capital investments, emerging markets and activist
investing are explored. The course will
also chronicle the disruptive nature and evolution of private equity and expose
the issues that face both the LP investor and the General Partner.
Students will learn how to
evaluate investment opportunities from a private equity perspective as well as
explore the proven value creation recipes of the top performers. Student teams
will identify a prospective private equity investment and make a simulated
presentation to an investment committee (composed of industry professionals) -
reviewing the investment thesis, valuation, financing, business plan, potential
returns and exit considerations.
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH:
Asiff Hirji
Asiff Hirji is the founder of Inflekxion LLC, a
private investment and performance enhancement firm and currently serves at the
Chief Restructuring Officer of Hewlett Packard. Asiff was formerly a
Partner with TPG Capital with a specialization in Financial Services,
Technology and E-Commerce. Prior to TPG, Asiff was President of TD AMERITRADE
and was previously a Partner at Bain & Company. He received his MBA from
The University of Western Ontario and his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science
at The University of Calgary.
Asiff serves on the boards of Saxo Bank, RentPath, TES Global and Eze
Software and is a former public board member of Advent Software and Citrix
Systems Inc. Some of the private equity
deals he led include Informatica , Advent Software,
Avaya, Nortel Enterprise, Saxo Bank, Primedia (now RentPath), TES
Global, Eze Software, Decision Insights, IMS, Sabre,
American Beacon, and LPL.
Peter Goodson
Peter Goodson
is a pioneer in the private equity discipline as an early stage partner at
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. One of the first management buyout firms founded
in 1978, the firm has purchased and transformed performance at over 65 large
companies. Among the more than $100 billion worth of acquisitions through which
CD&R assisted managements in enhancing value or replaced management to run
the businesses themselves are prominent examples such as Lexmark (the former
IBM Information Products business), the Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Company and
Hertz Rental Car. To highlight leadership capability, Partners of the firm
today include Jack Welch the former CEO of GE. In emerging markets Mr. Goodson
serves as a senior advisor to Tata Capital’s PE funds and is a longtime advisor
to the first PE firm in Vietnam Mekong Capital.
Before joining Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Mr.
Goodson was a Manager Director at Kidder Peabody & Co., where he
founded the M&A Group at the age of 27. He personally participated in over
800 corporate assignments. Mr. Goodson was chosen by his partners to negotiate
the $600 million sale of Kidder to General Electric, which he did, setting a
record for the highest relative price paid for an investment bank on record.
Mr. Goodson has taught as Haas for
the last eight years. He has also taught or lectured at Harvard, Wharton,
Kellogg, Tuck, Stanford, NYU Stern, and Columbia. He was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching award by the students of Haas
School of Business for several years running. He was also elected a fellow of
Dartmouth’s Tuck Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship and holds the
position of Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD in its Global Private Equity
Initiative.
For a flavor of what the Peter Goodson’s classroom is like tap the
following link for an article on his M&A class. His style for this PE class
will be much the same.
http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/article/master-art-deal-making-and-creating-value