Drawing on real-life cases from a wide range of industries two acclaimed experts offer a
sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals designed to maximize value for your side.
Business transactions take widely varying forms-from multibillion-dollar corporate mergers to
patent licenses to the signing of an all-star quarterback. Yet every deal shares the same goal
or at least should: to maximize the joint value created and to distribute that value among the
parties. Building on decades of experience teaching and advising on business deals Michael
Klausner and Guhan Subramanian show how to accomplish this goal through rigorous attention to
designing incentives conveying information and specifying parties' rights and obligations.
Deals captures the range of real-life transactional complexities with case studies covering
Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn Scarlett Johansson's contract dispute with Disney over the
release of Black Widow litigation surrounding LVMH's pandemic-disrupted acquisition of
Tiffany the feud between George Norcross and Lewis Katz over ownership of the Philadelphia
Inquirer NBC Viacom's negotiation with Paramount over the final three seasons of Frasier
and many more. In clear concise terms Klausner and Subramanian establish the basic framework
of negotiation and the economic concepts that must be addressed in order to maximize value.
They show how to tackle challenges such as information asymmetry between buyer and seller
moral hazard and opportunistic behavior. And the authors lay out responses to common risks
associated with long-term contracts emphasizing that a deal's exit rights should be carefully
considered at the start of transaction design. Unique in its practical application of economic
theory to actual dealmaking this book will be an indispensable resource for students and for
professionals across the business and legal world.
