GBUS 8160

Course Description

Students who seek careers in investment banking, venture capital, corporate finance, and management consulting will find this course of interest. Although students pursuing these career paths do not need tax expertise, they do need to be able to evaluate critically when to call in the tax experts and what the tax experts are telling them. Therefore this course provides a general understanding of the basic tax consequences of fundamental restructuring strategies and a framework for evaluating the priority that taxes have in these strategies. The course requires students to analyze how tax consequences affect the value of different strategies to the buyer and seller. Understanding the effect of taxes on the value of a deal to the buyer and seller prepares future financial executives and strategic advisors to make better decisions and to be more effective negotiators. Although the course focuses on the tax consequences of restructuring strategies and their valuation implications, it also covers the nontax advantages and disadvantages of these strategies. Most of the course covers U.S. federal income tax issues of restructuring of C corporations, but it also will address pass-through entities. Other topics will be entity formation, taxable asset and stock acquisitions, tax-free asset and stock reorganizations, and divestitures and liquidations. The principal modes of instruction are cases, readings, articles, exercises, and a group project that allows students to investigate a specific deal of personal interest.