https://titansoftakeover.com Practical M&A and investment banking education, taught through the playbooks of the legendary operators and bankers who actually built the deals. For analysts, associates, students, and anyone serious about working in finance. en-us https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/continuation-funds-and-gp-led-secondaries https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/continuation-funds-and-gp-led-secondaries Continuation funds are the fastest-growing exit route in private equity. They let a GP sell a portfolio company from one of its own funds to a new fund it also manages, with fresh outside capital. Here is how the structure works, why LPs accept it, and what every PE analyst should understand about the mechanics. Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rollover-equity-in-m-and-a https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rollover-equity-in-m-and-a Rollover equity is the portion of a sale price that the founder, management team, or existing investors keep in the new company rather than taking in cash. In private-equity-backed acquisitions, rollover equity is the single most important alignment mechanism between the buyer and the people who will keep running the business. Here is exactly how it works and what an analyst needs to model. Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/nav-financing-in-private-equity https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/nav-financing-in-private-equity NAV financing, also called fund-level financing or NAV lending, is the fastest-growing form of leverage in private equity. A GP pledges the value of an entire portfolio of companies as collateral for a loan to the fund, then uses the proceeds for distributions, follow-on investments, or to support struggling assets. The structure has roughly tripled since 2020 and is now one of the most controversial topics between GPs and LPs. Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/wilbur-ross https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/wilbur-ross He spent 24 years running Rothschild's bankruptcy desk before deciding he could do the trade better on his own. He bought eight bankrupt steel mills for $1.5 billion, fixed them, and sold the combined company to Mittal four years later for $4.5 billion. The same playbook ran through coal, textiles, and auto parts. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/tom-lee https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/tom-lee He bought Snapple in 1992 for $135 million, took it public eight months later, and sold it to Quaker Oats in 1994 for $1.7 billion. The Snapple trade is the most-studied single LBO in private-equity history because it ran the entire playbook in twenty-four months. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/felix-rohatyn https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/felix-rohatyn He turned Lazard Freres into the most influential mergers boutique on Wall Street, advised on the giant conglomerate deals of the 1960s and 1970s, and personally rescued New York City from bankruptcy in 1975. Felix Rohatyn is the model for the modern M&A adviser: small team, no balance sheet, immense influence. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/bruce-wasserstein https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/bruce-wasserstein He invented the modern hostile-takeover playbook at First Boston, taught it to a generation of M&A bankers, then walked across the street to found Wasserstein Perella and prove it was portable. By the time he died in 2009 he had advised on more than a thousand deals worth a trillion dollars. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/joe-perella https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/joe-perella He has founded the M&A practice at one major firm and three independent boutiques. Joe Perella did not invent the modern advisory model, but he built more of its modern institutions than any other living banker. First Boston M&A, Wasserstein Perella, Morgan Stanley M&A, and finally Perella Weinberg Partners. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/robert-greenhill https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/robert-greenhill He built the M&A department at Morgan Stanley in 1972, four years before First Boston or Goldman had one of their own. Bob Greenhill is the godfather of dedicated mergers advisory on Wall Street and the founder of one of the most respected boutiques of the modern era. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/jimmy-lee https://titansoftakeover.com/bankers/jimmy-lee He invented the modern syndicated leveraged loan, financed almost every major LBO of the 1990s and 2000s, and turned Chase (later JPMorgan) into the dominant debt house on Wall Street. Jimmy Lee did not advise on deals; he made them possible by writing the cheque before anyone else would. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/net-working-capital-in-m-and-a https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/net-working-capital-in-m-and-a The single most contested adjustment in any acquisition agreement. Net working capital is where buyers claw back the last 1 to 3 percent of purchase price after closing. Every analyst should understand it before the model is built. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/m-and-a-deal-lifecycle https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/m-and-a-deal-lifecycle From the first banker pitch to the post-closing integration. The eight stages of every modern M&A transaction, what each one is actually for, and where the value is won or lost. Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/wayne-huizenga https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/wayne-huizenga He built three Fortune 500 companies from scratch with the same playbook: pick a fragmented, sticky-revenue industry, buy the smallest operators on the cheap, integrate aggressively, and exit at a multiple no single operator could ever command alone. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/brad-jacobs https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/brad-jacobs He has built five publicly traded billion-dollar companies, each through serial acquisitions, in five separate industries. The playbook he uses is the most widely studied operator manual in modern private equity, and in 2024 he wrote it down. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/daniel-ludwig https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/daniel-ludwig He was the first American billionaire on the Forbes list, the richest man in the country for most of the 1970s, and almost nobody recognised him on the street. He built one of the largest private industrial empires in history by vertically integrating every commodity he touched and never granting an interview. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/mark-leonard https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/mark-leonard He has built one of the great compounders of the 21st century out of more than 900 acquisitions of tiny vertical-market software companies. He has held a single in-person shareholder Q&A in three decades. There are almost no public photographs of him. The playbook he writes down each year in his shareholder letters is the most carefully studied document in modern software M&A. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/john-malone https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/john-malone He built the modern American cable industry through 482 acquisitions and a financial structure so sophisticated that Warren Buffett once said he would not own a Malone company because he could not understand the balance sheet. Forty years later, Malone is still the largest individual landowner in the United States and the architect of more tax-efficient structures than any other operator alive. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/henry-singleton https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/henry-singleton He built Teledyne through 130 acquisitions in the 1960s when his stock was overvalued, then stopped acquiring and bought back almost 90 percent of his own shares when his stock was cheap. The total shareholder return was 20-fold over 24 years. Warren Buffett called him the best operator in American business. He almost never gave an interview. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rollup-playbook https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rollup-playbook A rollup buys dozens of small companies in the same industry, merges them, and sells the combined business at a much higher multiple. The arithmetic is one of the most reliable ways to build serious wealth in modern private equity. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/search-fund-model https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/search-fund-model A search fund is the most accessible path in finance to running and owning a real company. The model takes about $400,000 of search capital, two years of work, and produces returns that the Stanford GSB has tracked at roughly 35 percent IRR over four decades. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/multiple-arbitrage-explained https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/multiple-arbitrage-explained A small company doing $1 million in EBITDA sells for four times earnings. A mid-sized company doing $20 million in EBITDA sells for nine times. The spread is structural, durable, and the single most important reason private equity returns work. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/how-to-spot-an-lbo-target https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/how-to-spot-an-lbo-target Private equity buys roughly 8,000 American companies a year. The ones that produce the best returns share a small list of features any investor can screen for. Here is the checklist that has worked for forty years. Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/poison-pills-explained https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/poison-pills-explained The corporate defense that made hostile takeovers ten times harder, how the shareholder rights plan works, and why it changed the balance of power in the boardroom. Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/the-predators-ball https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/the-predators-ball Every spring, the most feared men in American finance flew to Beverly Hills to trade favors and financing with Michael Milken. It looked like a conference. It was a marketplace. Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/pickens-vs-gulf-oil https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/pickens-vs-gulf-oil The raid that proved no oil major was safe, and that you could lose the company, win the trade, and reshape an entire industry in the process. Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/perelman-takes-revlon https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/perelman-takes-revlon A beauty company, a leveraged outsider, and a Delaware court ruling that changed the rules of every hostile takeover that followed. Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/kkr-vs-beatrice https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/kkr-vs-beatrice The $6.2 billion deal that proved the leveraged buyout could scale into the billions, and set the stage, two years later, for RJR. Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/what-is-a-leveraged-buyout https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/what-is-a-leveraged-buyout The nuclear weapon of 1980s finance, explained in plain English. Before you can understand the deals, you need to understand the weapon. Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rjr-nabisco https://titansoftakeover.com/playbooks/rjr-nabisco A $25 billion wager that would end careers, forge fortunes, and change Wall Street forever, the inside story of the largest leveraged buyout in history. Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/ronald-perelman https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/ronald-perelman He took a small jewelry-and-licorice company called MacAndrews & Forbes and turned it into a borrowing platform, then used it to seize Revlon and rewrite American takeover law in the process. Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/ivan-boesky https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/ivan-boesky He turned merger arbitrage into a high art, became the most quoted Wall Street figure of the mid-1980s, and then ruined the profession for everyone by paying for the one thing arbitrage was never supposed to need: the answer in advance. Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/t-boone-pickens https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/t-boone-pickens A West Texas wildcatter who decided the cheapest oil in America was not in the ground at all. It was trading on the New York Stock Exchange, locked inside the complacent oil majors, and he could get at it with a phone and a printer. Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/henry-kravis https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/henry-kravis With his cousin George Roberts, Henry Kravis turned the leveraged buyout from a fringe Bear Stearns tactic into a global industry, and pushed the model all the way to a $31 billion deal that nearly broke his own firm. Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/michael-milken https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/michael-milken He built the high-yield bond market from scratch, financed the entire raider era, became the highest-paid man in the history of American finance, and then watched it all collapse in a federal indictment. Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/carl-icahn https://titansoftakeover.com/profiles/carl-icahn He had no love for airlines and barely flew. When Carl Icahn set his sights on TWA, he turned a tired company into one of the most profitable trades of his career, then walked away before the wreckage. Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT