The Dealmaker’s
Playbook.
The legendary moves of the titans of high finance. The raids, the buyouts, the quiet fortunes, each broken down with the one lesson you can steal from it. Get it free, then stay sharp every Sunday. 100% free.
- Six legendary plays, deconstructed
- The exact lesson to steal from each
- Plus a free weekly issue every Sunday
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The Playbook lands in your inbox. Six legendary plays and the lesson to steal from each.
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Then every Sunday, one fortune decoded. A five-minute read with The Sunday Brief. Free.
Legendary moves. The lesson behind each one.
Drill for oil on Wall Street
How Pickens put a company twenty times his size in play by spotting that its stock was worth less than the oil it already owned, and why he won the trade even after losing the company.
Buy the conglomerate, sell the parts
KKR's Beatrice buyout and the sum-of-the-parts thesis: why a bloated conglomerate is worth more in pieces, and how proving the model at one scale unlocked the capital for RJR.
Win the auction, lose the investment
The RJR Nabisco bidding war, the management conflict the board had to police, and the winner’s curse. The price you pay decides your return more than anything that comes after.
Change who is allowed to bid
How junk-bond financing let Perelman outbid an incumbent for Revlon, and the Delaware ruling that turned a defending board into an auctioneer the moment a sale became inevitable.
Build the room, control the door
Milken and the Predators' Ball: why owning the marketplace beats being a player in it, and how that same concentration became the single point of failure that ended Drexel.
Let the asset pay for itself
Ludwig's “mortgage shipbuilding”: sign the customer first, borrow against the contract, and let pre-sold output finance the asset. The quietest, safest leverage there is.
Built for the people trying to break in and level up.
Students targeting investment banking, private equity, and M&A. Analysts and associates learning the deal apprenticeship in real time. Anyone who wants to understand the deals, dramas, and dark arts of high finance well enough to be the sharpest person in the room.
Questions
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It is written from public information by people who work in and around M&A. It is financial education, not investment advice.
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