AC456      Half Unit
Accounting Analysis of Mergers, Acquisitions and Other Complex Deals

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Availability

Requisites

Pre-requisites:

Students must have completed AC416 before taking this course.

Assumed prior knowledge:

The course is designed for students with a good working knowledge of elementary statistics.

For many companies, corporate restructuring transactions - for example, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, and recapitalizations - are an integral part of their strategic activities.  The objectives of this course are (i) to introduce participants to such transactions; (ii) to provide them with a solid understanding of the key relevant accounting and financial reporting concepts; and (iii) to teach them how to analyse those transactions using accounting data. 

This is a practical course - at the end of it, participants should be in a position to both set out the accounting implications of a range of different corporate restructurings and to review and interpret the financial statements of companies that have been impacted by them - although course readings includes judiciously selected academic articles.  Additionally, while the course strives at all times to tie the accounting to the underlying transaction economics, it is an accounting course; as such, participants will be expected to have a solid understanding of the core financial accounting course, and in particular of the three primary financial statements.

The course will also use data analytics to perform in-depth analyses.

30 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The course consists of ten three-hour lectures/discussion sessions.  The first half of each session will be a standard lecture covering a core set of key topics; the second half will involve the discussion of a case that participants are expected to have read in advance.

There is no formal class participation component of the assessment - however, a participant’s contribution to the case discussions may be used to determine which side of a grade border a participant falls.

Case analysis / study weekly

• Students are expected to read the cases in advance and prepare for in-class discussion
• Students are expected to conduct small programming and data analysis tasks each week
• Students are also expected to read academic papers and other relevant material. The lecturer will guide students in the reading of academic papers

• Financial Analysis of Mergers and Acquisitions: Understanding Financial Statements and Accounting Rules with Case Studies, by Eli Amir and Marco Ghitti - REQUIRED
• Advanced Accounting, by Paul K. Chaney and Debra C. Jeter
• International Financial Reporting and Analysis, by Martin Hoogendoorn, Ann Jorissen, Collette Kirwan, Carien van Mourik, David Alexander, Petra Inwink, Giovanna Michelon

Exam (80%), duration: 120 Minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period

Problem sets (20%) in Winter Term Week 1

There is a set of compulsory “problem sets” designed to test basic concepts and a final exam in the ST.