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BOOK: Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring
by Stuart C. Gilson
(John
Wiley & Sons)
News of major job cuts, bankruptcies, mergers, and buyouts seems to dominate the headlines these days, as global economic forces put pressure on companies to adapt in pursuit of higher market value. Indeed, in recent years, thousands of companies have had to restructure in one way or another in order to survive in an uncertain economy. The only sure thing, according to HBS professor Stuart Gilson, is that restructuring itself has become more than just a last-resort action of desperate management teams. It is, instead, a critical management tool that must be carefully utilized in light of its far-reaching implications for a company's many stakeholders. "Once considered a rare event, restructuring has become an important part of everyday business practice," Gilson asserts in Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups.
The book is based on the MBA course of the same name that Gilson has taught for the last eight years. It explains exactly how corporate restructuring is done, from the first signs of concern until the last deal is completed. An expert on corporate bankruptcy and turnarounds, Gilson uses intensively researched case studies of thirteen corporations that tackled some of the most controversial and innovative restructuring efforts of the last decade. Each case reveals the multitude of decisions that took place behind the headlines, describing, for example, the massive downsizing at the Scott Paper Company under "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap and the merger of Chase Manhattan Bank with Chemical Bank.
Based on interviews with CEOs, managers, investors, bankers, management consultants, and attorneys, the cases look at why each company decided to restructure and then at how it proceeded when faced with multiple options. Those options — from mergers and acquisitions to leveraged buyouts and asset divestitures to "vulture" investing and tracking stock — are also explored.
Gilson reminds readers that the devil is truly in the details, filling the 516-page text with real and specific financial data, flow charts, and statistics to illuminate each case. A portable version of Gilson's course, Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring gives readers the chance to learn the intricacies of this increasingly critical management process in today's volatile business climate.
— Margie Kelley
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