Course summary

What is the aim of this course?

Consulting firms are hired very often to help with Mergers & Acquisitions. Those projects are difficult as you have to deliver results fast and you have to deal with many stakeholders. You not only have to help select potential targets, model businesses in Excel, but also you will have to estimate the potential benefits of M&A, the value of the firm, and forecast the development of the acquired firms. In this course, I will teach how to perform fast and efficiently different types of analyses during M&A projects.

In the course you will learn the following things:

1. What kind of analyses you may have to do during the M&A project

2. How to Select Potential Targets for M&A using Excel

3. How to create a financial model in Excel for M&A purposes

4. How to estimate the value of M&A target

5. How to estimate potential synergies coming from the M&A process

6. How to conduct commercial due diligence

7. What kind of market research tools you can use during due diligence

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated in total 2 billion of additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 124 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, materials shown in the lectures so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you or your team in your work.

Why did I decide to create this course?

M&A projects are fast-paced and require from you a lot of hard work. You have to also master different skills and tools that you will be using during such projects especially: financial modeling, market research, identifying synergies, and potential improvements. Most firms, don’t give you the full toolbox that you need. This may lead to huge frustration during M&A projects and a lot of inefficiencies.

Therefore, I have decided to create this course that will help students understand or refresh the main skills and tools that they need during M&A projects. The course will give you the knowledge and insight into real-life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do it during M&A projects. You will master how to analyze data and draw conclusions from the analyses. On top of that, you will also master the essential information related to valuation.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to become a world-class Management Consultant or Business Analyst you have to have a pretty decent understanding of M&A projects and analyses done during such projects. That is why, I highly recommend this course to Management Consultants or Business Analysts, especially those that did not finish business schools or Economics. The course will help you become an expert in M&A analyses on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step by step guide loaded with tones of analyses, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you understand, analyze the businesses. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. What kind of analyses you may have to do during the M&A project

2. How to Select Potential Targets for M&A using Excel

3. How to create a financial model in Excel for M&A purposes

4. How to estimate the value of M&A target

5. How to estimate potential synergies coming from the M&A process

6. How to conduct commercial due diligence

7. What kind of market research tools you can use during due diligence

You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

Currently, you will find the following things in the course:

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• When M&A is done? Mergers & acquisitions are done for a lot of reasons by different players. In this section we will discuss how do they differ and why they invest so much money in M&A.

• M&A process. In this brief section, I will shed some light on how the M&A process looks like.

• Selecting Potential Targets. M&A starts with picking the right targets that make sense. In this section, I will show you how you can do that in practice using Excel. We will conduct analyses of potential targets in different industries.

• Modeling Businesses in Excel. During M&A projects you will quite often have to create a model of the business in Excel. I will show you how to do that using a few examples.

• Valuation. During consulting projects, especially devoted to M&A or due diligence you will have to evaluate a specific business. In this section, I will show you examples of how to do it in practice.

• Estimating Potential Impact. In this section, I will show you how to estimate the potential benefit coming from M&A. We will do in Excel for a few interesting case studies.

• Commercial Due Diligence. A lot of effort of Management Consultants goes to the Commercial Due Diligence stage of the M&A Process. We will have a look at some things that are important during this stage.

• Requesting Data from the Target Company & Independent Data Gathering. In the next 6 short sections, we will discuss how you can collect data required for the commercial due diligence.

• Discussion of the results. In the last section, we will briefly give you some tips on how to discuss the results of commercial due diligence with the customer.

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Useful frameworks and techniques

2. Analyses that are shown in the course

3. Additional resources

4. Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

5. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• How to conduct fast and efficiently analyses in Excel during M&A projects

• How to select potential targets for M&A

• How to estimate in Excel potential synergies from M&A

• How to conduct commercial due diligence

• What market research tools are useful during M&A and due diligence?

• Essential Valuation techniques used in M&A

• When mergers and acquisitions make sense.

• Create a business model of the firm in Excel

• Analyze business units

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Management Consultants and Business Analysts

• Managers

• Financial Controllers

• Investment Analysts

• Startup Founders

• Project Managers

• Managers responsible for Acquisitions and Mergers

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics

• Basic or intermediate knowledge of finance & accounting