Customer Reviews

Merger Arbitrage: How to Profit from Event-Driven Arbitrage (Wiley Finance)

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I just finished reading the Merger Arbitrage book by Thomas Kirchner and I really enjoyed it. Mr. Krichner's book broke down the philosophy and process behind investing in mergers in a simple and concise way so that anyone can understand how merger arbitrage works. The book has detailed examples of past mergers which really help to illustrate how mergers operate and how to take advantage of them. The book also talks about risks involved with mergers and explains how some risks really aren't that bad considering the potential up side for merger arbitrage strategies.

My favorite part of the book was chapter 12 which talked about how merger arbitrage strategies complement traditional investment strategies. Mr. Kirchner pointed out simple benefits such as diversification of risk and return streams as basic reasons to incorporate a merger arbitrage strategy into traditional investment strategies and he backs up his claims with data that shows exactly what he is talking about.

Overall I would recommend this book to any person who wants to learn more about investing. The book caters to any level of investor and it has great examples which really help out!

Merger Arbitrage is informative and engaging and if you like finance and investing you will love this book, even if you haven't spent more than five minutes in your life thinking about mergers & acquisitions. A more descriptive title might have been 99 Mergers because that's essentially what the book is, the definitive collection of mergers and what we can learn from each one.

There are hostile takeovers, management buyouts, bidding wars, busted mergers, spinoffs, proxy wars, insider scams, activist shareholders, private equity kings, anti-trust suits, appraisal actions, and a few other situations that you've never thought of but should know about because let's face it, anything can and does happen in the financial markets.

It is a fun and informative read and Kirchner includes enough statistics to let us see the big picture, for example what mergers are more likely to succeed and why, both for firms and investors. It is also pro-shareholder and pro-investor and rightfully skeptical about both Wall Street (including private equity) and management. I still have one chapter to go in the book but am already recommending it to my friends and colleagues who have an interest in the markets.