Contents — All articles (A–Z)
24 articles in M&Apedia, listed alphabetically.
A
- Accretion/dilution analysis — A test of whether a deal raises or lowers the acquirer’s earnings per share.
- Acquisition — The purchase of one company, or its assets, by another that gains control.
- Antitrust and merger control — Government review of mergers to prevent harm to competition.
B
- Business valuation — The set of methods used to estimate the economic value of a company or its equity.
C
- Comparable company analysis — Relative valuation using the market multiples of similar publicly traded companies.
D
- Deal structure — How an acquisition is assembled — chiefly the choice between buying stock or assets.
- Definitive purchase agreement — The binding contract that governs an acquisition and its terms.
- Discounted cash flow — An intrinsic valuation that discounts a company’s projected cash flows to present value.
- Due diligence — The investigation of a target company carried out before a deal is signed or closed.
E
- Earnout — Deferred, contingent payments tied to the target’s performance after closing.
- Enterprise value — The total value of a company’s operations, independent of its capital structure.
G
- Goodwill — The intangible asset recorded when a buyer pays more than the fair value of net assets.
H
- Hostile takeover — An acquisition pursued against the wishes of the target company’s board.
I
- Investment banking in M&A — The advisory role banks play in originating, valuing and executing deals.
L
- Letter of intent — A preliminary document outlining the main terms of a proposed deal, mostly non-binding.
- Leveraged buyout — An acquisition financed largely with borrowed money, repaid from the target’s cash flows.
M
- Merger — The combination of two companies into a single surviving legal entity.
- Mergers and acquisitions — The umbrella term for transactions that combine the ownership of companies or their assets.
P
- Poison pill — A defense that lets a target dilute a hostile bidder by issuing cheap shares to others.
- Precedent transaction analysis — Relative valuation using the multiples paid in comparable past acquisitions.
- Purchase price allocation — The process of assigning an acquisition’s price to the assets and liabilities acquired.
S
- Synergy — The extra value a combined company can create beyond the sum of the two firms apart.
T
- Tender offer — A public offer made directly to shareholders to buy their shares, usually at a premium.
- Types of mergers — Classification of mergers by the economic relationship between the combining firms.