This page is Professor Thompson's Corporate Restructuring class (Finc 448). It is in the process of being updated for Spring, 2009. This class is undergoing significant restructuring and a detailed syllabus will not be available until the class starts. Feel free to peruse last year's syllabus for more feel for the topics covered, but the main information about the course is right here --- The main topics in the class will be troubled debt restructuring, downsizing corporate transactions, and the last couple weeks will be a couple of comprehensive cases in corporate finance, strategy, and restructuring to put a capstone on the course. The troubled debt material will include out of court restructurings (e.g., workouts, voluntary recapitalizations) and bankruptcy restructurings (e.g., in Chapter 7 or 11 filings). This section of the course will be at least 50% of the course. The downsizing corporate transactions will cover spin off and split off restructurings, IPO equity carve outs, divestitures and, perhaps, tracking stock restructurings. This section of the course will be at most 30% of the course. The structure of the deliverables for the course will be cases done in groups of 3-6 students, the groups may be formed as "cross-section" groups. Please consider diversity in forming your groups. There will be group presentations of some or all of the cases. There is no final and we do not meet in finals week. There will be two textbooks for the course, discussed below, and a case packet. Performance evaluation will be on the basis of group performance on the case write-ups, individual performance on in-class participation, group presentations of cases, and peer evaluations. The workload in this class will be similar to the workload in Financial Decisions. Financial Decisions, or professor approval is a pre-requisite for the Corporate Restructuring class.
Go to the respective links to get syllabus information, assignment due dates, readings, questions, some spreadsheet links, some powerpoint slides links, etc.
Corporate Restructuring Syllabus, Spring Quarter, Section 61, 62
To facilitate group formation, an Excel file with the class lists based on registration files on Monday of First Week can be found here.
Case
Questions
The files at the links below are in pdf format and are in my case packet for Finance D42. They are not necessary or required readings for this course, but if you would like to see some of the valuation materials that I use in Financial Decisions, feel free to take a look.
cost_cap.pdf is a document covering many issues in cost of capital estimation. The main focus of the discussion is estimating WACC's, but it discusses estimate the cost of equity unlevered as well.
apv_wacc.pdf is a document covering the theory of using WACC methods vs. using APV methods to value corporations.
cash_flow.pdf is a document covering the estimation of project cash flows. It is really a teaching note for D30, but also discusses (close to the end) the logic behind (and the assumptions behind) using NOPAT/r as a continuing value method
lvcosteq.pdf is a document that derives the cost of equity as a function of leverage in the presence of both risky debt and with personal and corporate taxes (integrated tax code). It is only for the motivated type, and also makes some tricky assumptions.
Announcement: Finance 442, or permission of the instructor, is now a prerequisite for Finance 448. The intention of the class is to be somewhat of a Financial Decisions II class. The class presupposes that everyone is familiar with capital structure issues and is conversant in valuation methods: discounted cash flow (using WACC or Adjusted Present Value methods), different kinds of multiples, etc.
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If you have questions about this web page, send them to t-thompson2@kellogg.northwestern.edu .
Last Revised: March 31. 2008.