The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to present:
PON Live! Book Talk
Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions
A virtual talk with:
Guhan Subramanian
Chair, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School
Joseph H. Flom Professor of Law and Business Harvard Law School
Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law Harvard Business School
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm ET (US and Canada)
Free and open to the public.
About the talk:
During this session, PON’s Faculty Chair Guhan Subramanian will present his new book, Deals: The Economic Structure of Business Transactions. In Deals, Guhan Subramanian and Michael Klausner draw on real-life cases from a wide range of industries and offer a sophisticated but accessible guide to business deals, designed to maximize value for your side. Business transactions take widely varying forms—from multibillion-dollar corporate mergers to patent licenses to the signing of an all-star quarterback. Yet every deal shares the same goal, or at least should: to maximize the joint value created and to distribute that value among the parties. Deals captures the range of real-life transactional complexities with case studies covering Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, Scarlett Johansson’s contract dispute with Disney over the release of Black Widow, litigation surrounding LVMH’s pandemic-disrupted acquisition of Tiffany, the feud between George Norcross and Lewis Katz over ownership of the Philadelphia Inquirer, NBC/Viacom’s negotiation with Paramount over the final three seasons of Frasier, and many more. In clear, concise terms, Klausner and Subramanian establish the basic framework of negotiation and the economic concepts that must be addressed in order to maximize value. They show how to tackle challenges, such as information asymmetry between buyer and seller, moral hazard, and opportunistic behavior. And the authors lay out responses to common risks associated with long-term contracts, emphasizing that a deal’s exit rights should be carefully considered at the start of transaction design. Unique in its practical application of economic theory to actual dealmaking, this book will be an indispensable resource for students and for professionals across the business and legal world.
The book is available to purchase on the PON website here.
About the speaker:
Guhan Subramanian is the Joseph Flom Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School and the Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law at the Harvard Business School. He is the first person in the history of Harvard University to hold tenured appointments at both HLS and HBS. At HLS he teaches courses in negotiations and corporate law. At HBS he teaches in several executive education programs, such as Strategic Negotiations, Making Corporate Boards More Effective, and the Advanced Management Program. He is the faculty chair for the JD/MBA program at Harvard University, the Harvard Program on Negotiation, the Mergers & Acquisitions executive education course at HBS, and the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty he spent three years at McKinsey & Company.
Accommodation Statement:
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON) is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation(s) for persons with disabilities in connection with its programs and activities. Accommodations must not fundamentally alter applicable PON programming and are not retroactive.
Event participants should request accommodations at least two weeks prior to the start date of a program or event, as accommodations may take time to implement. Please note that PON will make every effort to secure services, but these are subject to availability.
To request accommodations please e-mail ponevents@law.harvard.edu.
