Deals

Course Number 2267

Professor Guhan Subramanian
Spring; Q3Q4; 3 credits
28 Sessions, Paper

Enrollment: Limited to 40 HBS and 40 HLS students

This advanced negotiation course examines complex corporate deals. Many of the class sessions will be structured around recent or ongoing deals, selected for the complex issues of law and business that they raise. Student teams will research and analyze these transactions in order to present their most important aspects and lessons to the class. For many of these presentations (as well as some more traditional case studies and exercises), the lawyers, bankers, and/or business principals who participated in the transaction under discussion will attend class, listen to the team’s assessment, provide their perspectives, and suggest broader negotiation insights.

Topics developed throughout the course include: how negotiators create and claim value through the setup, design, and tactical implementation of agreements; complexities that can arise through agency, asymmetric information, moral hazard, and adverse selection; structural, psychological, and interpersonal barriers that can hinder agreement; and the particular challenges inherent in the roles of advisors as negotiators. The course will also explore the differences between deal-making and dispute resolution; single-issue and multiple-issue negotiations; and between two parties and multiple parties.

The class will be comprised of approximately an equal number of students from HBS and HLS, and class sessions will take place primarily at HBS.

Evaluation will be on the basis of class participation and deal presentation.