Prerequisites: Admission is by permission only and interested students should send a resume and a cover letter to the instructor at vbosiljevac@law.harvard.edu. The deadline for LLM and upper-level JD applications is November 5. The deadline for 1L applications is November 15. Cross-registrants can apply and should do so by January 20, 2023.

Exam Type: No Exam

The goal of this class is to provide students with the investment banking toolkit for assessing and modeling M&A and leveraged buyout (LBO) transactions that is used in Wall Street investment banks.

Students will learn how to model and evaluate mergers and LBOs in Excel as investment bankers do (background topics such as accounting will be covered). They will learn about the strategic reasons and tactics for mergers and acquisitions, LBOs, corporate divestiture, restructurings, and hostile takeovers from investment bankers’ perspective. Case studies of mergers, acquisitions, and LBOs drawn from a variety of different industries throughout the world will be examined.

The class workload and assignments will be challenging, requiring students to apply learned concepts, tools, and techniques to real-world problems. Active participation is required.

There is no final exam. Instead, there will be a final take-home project requiring students to build an advanced merger model and a pitchbook (40-50 hours workload) as one would do in an investment bank. Course materials will include textbooks, HBS cases, and modeling video tutorials.

No prior experience in finance is required. On contrary, the ideal student is highly motivated with no practical investment banking experience. 

This course is intended for students who want to embark on a career in finance or who will practice corporate law (mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, corporate transactions, and other related fields).