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FINC 6017 Mergers and Acquisitions
Group Assignments
Instructions:
1. In the group assignment you will be providing advice to the bidder.
2. Students must choose ONE company from the list below. You must keep in mind that the deal you choose allows you to do a full comprehensive study for your individual assignment tasks and group assignment tasks as per the instructions provided. Your chosen company and the deal you choose MUST align with your group members’ choice, as the individual assignment is a subsection of the group assignment. All group member must have to choose the same company that they have chosen as their assignment. Please choose a company below and follow the instructions and requirements:
3. A timeline of events indicating which date(s) your group has decided to conduct the analysis must be provided with a justification in the appendix. You should conduct your own research from a variety of sources.
4. According to the university’s guidelines and policies, the use of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot or/and any other AI tools are permitted as long as the name of the AI tool, prompts used and the outcome of the prompts are recorded in the individual log which then is required submitted in Canvas. AI may be employed solely to aid in learning; however, the responses provided by AI must not be used verbatim or in a substantially similar manner to answer questions in this assignment. It is not compulsory to use AI. If you choose not to use AI then that is fine too. Whether you use AI tools or not you must fill out the Log form and submit it separately in Canvas at the date of your assignment.
5. To avoid any conflict of interest or free rider problem or plagiarism, everyone must contribute to completing the assignment. Group members must divide their work and agree upon it. Individual logs (each one of the group member’s contributions and actual work that went into the assignment) must be kept as individual log. This is the individual’s responsibility. If anyone used any Open AI resources, then the name of the AI tool, prompt, and the content used to obtain the information from Open AI must be included in your Log, which should be submitted at the time of assignment submission. If individual members choose not to use AI tools, that is fine too. Either way, each team member must submit the completed form as a log in Canvas.
Group Assignment: Deal Advisory Report and Pitch Presentation
Due: 11:59pm, Friday 7th November 2025 (Week 13)
Report word limit: 15 pages for main report, plus up to 7 pages of appendix material
Report weight: 30%
Group number: 4-5 students per group.
Presentation length: 7 minutes Presentation
weight: 15%
Video Recording: Video of Group Presentation
You and your team have been hired to advise the Acquirer on the bid strategy for Target and provide a recommendation for the next steps.
The deal advisory report should be written for the management of the Acquirer and provide an in-depth analysis of the strategic rationale, valuation and recommended next steps. You are expected to conduct a valuation analysis and deal strategy for this group report. Discussion should contain both qualitative and quantitative aspects, where your arguments and conclusions are based on the outcomes of your research.
Report structure and mark breakdown:
1. Executive summary (1 mark)
Use this section to concisely summarise the key issues and recommendation/s of your report.
2. Industry overview (2 marks)
Provide an overview of the industry in which the target and acquirer operate. Questions you might consider examining include: What are the key drivers of the industry? What is the relative size of the target in the industry? How have previous M&A deals affected the industry? What is the near-term outlook for M&A in this sector?
3. Strategic rationale (2 marks)
Examine the key motives and drivers behind the deal. This section should include discussion of the benefits and opportunities. You might also consider the ownership, management and operations of the target and bidder. Your response should consider the theories and empirical evidence discussed in class in addition to your independent research.
4. Deal valuation (8 marks)
Determine an acquisition offer price for the target. Items that you should consider in this section include: What is the standalone value of the target company? What assumptions did you make to come to this conclusion on valuation? In particular, you need to clearly explain and justify your growth and discount assumptions. What are the achievable synergies (if any) of the transaction and how large are they? What is the control premium payable (if any) of the deal? What is the NPV of the transaction? In your response, you should provide the range of offer prices which you believe to be ‘fair and reasonable’ given your valuation analysis, and consider the context of the offer history in the deal to this point in time. You should also conduct sensitivities where relevant to confirm the robustness of your model and conclusions.
5. Transaction structure (5 marks)
In this section you should consider: How should the deal be structured if it proceeds? Should a scheme of arrangement be used or should it be a takeover? What conditions should be attached to the offer? What approach should the acquirer take? What form of consideration should be used? What should the offer be, and is there scope for this to be revised further? How should the deal be financed?
6. Risks and market reaction (5 marks)
Analyse the deal risks and identify possible mitigation strategies. For example: What risks exist for the acquirer in undertaking this transaction? What approvals would have to be sought before the takeover could be completed? What are the relevant regulatory risks? What can you learn from sector precedents? What would be the likely response of target shareholders, and how could this be best managed? How could the bidder’s strategy manage these risks? What has been the market reaction to the deal evolution so far?
7. Deal strategy and recommendation (4 marks)
Identify a set of possible actions the bidder can take and provide a final recommendation based on your analysis in this report. Your recommendation should be clearly stated and outline implementable next steps for the bidder.
8. Professional report formatting and teamwork (3 marks)
It is important to consider your formatting choices and present a professional-looking report. It is recommended you consider how charts, tables, subheadings and dot points, colour and other formatting techniques can be used to enhance the way you present your findings. One mark of this item is allocated to teamwork, where the consistency of the report in formatting and style will reflect the quality of teamwork. If you complete the group assignment individually, you will receive zero for this component.
Further report requirements
Address the requirements of the report clearly. Marks will be awarded for the clarity and depth of your analysis, the structure of your report and how you present your findings. Please use 12pt font (New Times Roman) with 2cm margins and include all references, if required, in a bibliography. Faculty and/or university referencing requirements must be followed and academic honesty policies apply. Title page, table of content and reference section do not count towards page limit.
Written reports must be submitted via the Canvas submission link labelled ‘Group Assignment Report’ as a word of pdf document. You also need to submit your valuation workings. Workings will not be directly graded, but will assist the examiner in determining your valuation methods. Submit your workings as an Excel spreadsheet via the ‘Group Assignment – Supporting workings’ link in Canvas. Please ensure you have submitted your report and supporting workings, and that you document your submission (confirmation email/screenshot) to avoid late submission penalty issues.
Only one member of the group needs to make the submission for all the documents.
Presentation requirements and mark breakdown
You need to present your recommendation as a pitch to the bidder. Your pitch must be a pre-recorded video in which all team members present and a pitch slide deck (in PowerPoint or similar). The length of the pitch presentation needs to be between 6 (minimum) and 7 (maximum) minutes. The content of your presentation should cover all of the sections outlined in the report requirements, and will be marked on the following criteria:
1. Persuasiveness of argument (4 marks)
How effectively as a team do you present your recommendation? Is it a convincing pitch?
2. Quality of content presented (4 marks)
There is a lot of content in the report. You have to make decisions about how you fit that into a short period of time and how you structure your pitch to prioritise your key message and recommendation.
3. Professional oral communication (3 marks)
Clear and confident language that would be suitable to a professional corporate environment.
4. Professional slide formatting (2 marks)
Are your slides clear, consistent, and support your pitch?
5. Evidence of team-work (2 marks)
Can you find a way to demonstrate in your pitch that you worked together as a team? This can be challenging in the remote study environment but might be as simple as ensuring a consistent format and dress code and/or including a brief mention of who makes up your team. If you complete the group assignment individually, you will receive zero for this component.
Further pitch presentation requirements
Presentation recordings must be submitted via the Canvas submission link labelled Presentation’ . You also need to submit your slide deck via the
A suggested approach to recording your presentation is to use the recording feature in zoom, including the active speaker during a shared screen presentation. You might alternatively use more advanced video editing skills to think about how to put the presentation together.
Only one member of the group needs to make the submission. Where multiple team members have submitted documents, we will assess only the final submission. Supporting work should be submitted as a separate file showing all the work in Excel. The file must be named after the Group Number.
Managing group work
You are expected to meet at least five times during the course (from Week 4 to Week 10) of the assignment to discuss on the assignment tasks and keep your groupmates updated on your progress. In your first group meeting please decide who will be the group leader and the group leader will be responsible for coordinating the groupwork and submitting the group report by the due date.
Each group member will fill the Peer Evaluation of Performance form and submit the form individually online. Due to limited time and markers available in this semester, we have to grant the same mark to all group members based on group performance. However, free riders will be penalised and the information that you provide in the peer review form will be used to determine whether a group member has made a reasonable contribution to the groupwork. You should also submit the Group Agreement Form.