Spring 2027

Mergers and Acquisitions

Study of the market for corporate control including mergers and tender offers, covering motives, impacts on stakeholders, laws, and strategies.

offering recorded2–3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Brad Chandler3.9/5

Summary

1 / 3

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.65 GPA, 84.3% A/AB (n=51 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.19 GPA, 42.3% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.57 GPA, 78.2% A/AB (n=55 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify the motives for acquisition and how to value an acquisition target both independently and as part of the integrated firm.

  • Utilize financial statements to calculate earnings, leverage, and cash flow projections resulting from an acquisition or leveraged buyout

  • Demonstrate a basic understanding of the legal framework underlying the merger transaction, including negotiation, announcement, antitakeover defenses, the fiduciary duties of the board of directors and management, and antitrust regulation

  • Explain the mechanics of takeover defense strategies, their use and misuse by incumbent management, and the concept of managerial entrenchment

  • Parse the details of a merger from the disclosed agreement and to understand the incentives of the various parties involved, including target and acquirer management and the facilitating investment bank

  • Develop a broad theoretical framework that connects the theories of capital structure, managerial entrenchment, corporate governance and diversification to the decision to merge and the financing of the transaction.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

(FINANCE 305, 325, and ECON/​FINANCE 320) or FINANCE 700 and (FINANCE 635 or 725)

FINANCE 650

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 5.00/5 from 4 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.48 GPA, 73.9% A/AB (n=23 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.19 GPA, 42.3% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.49 GPA, 71.8% A/AB (n=39 letter grades). Includes jointly taught sections.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

BRAD CHANDLER is recorded teaching in Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 400

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.65 GPA, 84.3% A/AB (n=51 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.19 GPA, 42.3% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.57 GPA, 78.2% A/AB (n=55 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Market for corporate control, mergers, and tender offers
  • Motives for business combinations and impacts on stakeholders and efficiency
  • Federal and state laws governing mergers and offensive/defensive strategies

Skills

  • Valuing acquisition targets independently and as part of the integrated firm
  • Calculating earnings, leverage, and cash flow projections for acquisitions or leveraged buyouts
  • Understanding the legal framework of merger transactions including fiduciary duties and antitrust regulation
  • Explaining takeover defense strategies and managerial entrenchment
  • Parsing merger agreements and understanding party incentives
  • Developing theoretical frameworks connecting capital structure, governance, and diversification to M&A decisions

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records
FINANCE 650 · Spring 2027

Mergers and Acquisitions

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:233:003065",
    "course_id": "FINANCE 650",
    "course_uid": "course_4f335a037ef8f46750cedcf2",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "003065",
    "source_subject_id": "233",
    "title": "Mergers and Acquisitions",
    "credits_min": 2,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Occasionally"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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No records available.

Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "ffb7fc1e6bb02a548eb89cc004f07a7c1e16468bcf3dd857f8c6546bed3e2d1f",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}