Higher commodity prices, and higher currency and commodity price volatility have combined with challenging economic circumstances to make for very challenging economics within many industries today. These factors introduce risk to both top line revenue as well as the cost structure to wreak...

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that it is always beneficial to be first – first in, first to market, first in class. The popular business literature is full of support for being first and legions of would-be business leaders, steeped in the Jack Welch school of business strategy,...

We now live in a world where non-investment grade industrials do and really should trade at 2-3x EBITDA. This is true, despite historical market multiples and precedent transactions being in the 5-7x EBITDA range. It all starts with the fixed income markets. We have entered a new era for...

As central figures in mergers and acquisitions, today's Chief Financial Officers are redefining the practices of their profession. This paper is an excerpt, published in strategy business (issue 53, Winter 2008) that represents the first chapter of the new book, The CFO as Deal Maker: Thought...

Call them the New Blues - emerging blue-chip companies and sovereign wealth funds from developing markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and the Middle East - that can compete on the same level in mergers and acquisitions with the largest and most powerful corporations in the West. These...

Easy money conditions in recent years fuelled a surge in deals ranging from acquisitions and LBOs, to leveraged recapitalisations. The use of increasingly forgiving, and complex, capital structures, including the growth of second lien and PIK toggle note financings, was not only a sign of an...

Even with very aggressive growth assumptions for renewables, the role for oil and gas will grow, both in absolute terms and as a share of China’s total energy mix. And yet China’s domestic production of oil and gas continues to fall short and China’s need for expensive, foreign imports...

An application of Capabilities-Driven Strategy to upstream E&P. As the industry evolves, so too must E&P strategies, portfolios, organizational capabilities, and operating models – capabilities must be enhanced, workflows streamlined, and productivity optimized, through broad operating model...

Despite the economic climate, many companies in the healthcare sector remain very well capitalized. And with the capital markets re-opening, we see growing momentum to re-evaluate portfolios and to exploit today's price environment. We studied 1,750 healthcare deals over the 1998-2008 period, to...

With the search for next generation drugs getting harder, longer, and more expensive, pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to develop a broader suite of relevant capabilities (e.g. specific disease areas, high throughput drug screening, payor management, etc.). For example, biotech companies...