Preface

This book tries to fill a gap in the financial literature. I was always frustrated by the lack of public information available on strategic equity. However, it is not surprising. Strategic equity transactions take place behind Chinese walls because often these transactions are highly confidential and market sensitive. Sometimes, investment banks and their clients try to avoid publicly disclosing a strategic equity transaction when it is part of an M&A transaction or aimed at circumventing specific accounting, tax and/or regulatory treatments.

The objective of this book is not to provide an exhaustive guide on strategic equity solutions. There are infinite possibilities in structuring strategic equity deals with different features in order to achieve a strategic objective. Instead, this book tries to be a useful reference and source of ideas. Although no two strategic equity transactions are the same, there are common threads that run through most strategic equity transactions (see Figure 0.1). This book is a summary of my work helping senior corporate and financial institutions executives to make sound strategic equity decisions in the following situations: