M&A Finance: Valuation and Deal Design

In this Specialization, you’ll learn how finance teams and deal professionals measure value creation, value businesses, and design M&A deals that hold up under real assumptions. You’ll begin with core corporate finance: using financial statements to build ratios, assess financial health, forecast cash flows, and manage short- and long-term liquidity. You’ll then apply valuation and investment decision tools—including discount rates, risk and uncertainty, and performance evaluation—so you can judge whether a project or acquisition creates shareholder value. Next, you’ll move into the finance of mergers and acquisitions, focusing on how to value and price deals and choose the financing mix. You’ll examine how leverage changes the cost of capital and can affect stock price, and how transactions shift a company’s capital structure. You’ll also work with major deal types, including strategic M&A, private equity leveraged buyouts (LBOs), and restructuring transactions such as spinoffs and asset transfers, using a consistent set of valuation and decision frameworks. By the end of this Specialization, you will be able to: Build ratio-based assessments and cash flow forecasts to evaluate value creation and liquidity needs Estimate discount rates, incorporate risk, and compute NPV to evaluate deals for acquirers and targets Value synergies and translate assumptions into pricing and financing decisions for different deal structures