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Course: Mergers, Acquisitions & IPO's
Self-Paced Online Course: $ 595
Estimated Study Hours: 23

This course covers the key aspects of buying and selling businesses, raising finance through IPO, the sale of shares and other securities. Anyone raising finance from US investors (even raising loans) is triggering securities regulation and needs to understand how to navigate through the securities landscape in order to avoid falling foul of the SEC.

With a range of video lectures, interviews with entrepreneurs, company acquirers, sellers and experts in the field, this course explains how mergers and acquisitions are structured, why they are structured in these ways, alternative exits for startup ventures, avoidance of unintentional poison pills, valuation at M&A sale, IPO and other scenarios, patent asset sale transactions, securities regulation in the US, IPO and the registration process, exemptions from registration (including Regulation D), securities regulation as applied to startup ventures and insider trading.

Upon completion of this course, you will have the skills to work in mergers, acquisitions, public offerings of stock, and will be confident negotiating the sale, purchase or investment in any type of business.

Learning Objectives

In taking this course, students gain a comprehension of the following:

How merger and acquisition transactions are structured, and why triangular approaches are often adopted to limit liabilities and minimize tax exposure.
The advantages and disadvantages of various exits for startup investors, including sale of the company in an M&A transaction and IPO.
The steps in the merger/acquisition process, including the process of preparing a company for sale, due diligence and the roles of the officers, brokers and bankers in the M&A transaction.
How startup and smaller companies qualify for exemptions to escape the burden of registering their shares with the SEC when raising finance from venture investors and other accredited investors.
The process of registering a company and selling shares in a U.S. initial public offering (IPO).
How the sale of shares, bonds and other securities are regulated with rules administered by the Securities Exchange Commission in the U.S.
When and how the sale of shares and other securities have to be registered with the SEC, and identify the point at which a company is required to start filing reports with the SEC and is required to conform with Sarbanes Oxley regulations.

Modules

This course comprises the following learning modules:

Mergers & Acquisitions
IPO & Securities Regulation

Videos, eTextbooks and Rich Media Content

The course materials are provided in a range of compelling rich media formats comprising videos, electronic textbooks, audio recordings, interactive quizzes and links to online content. As a wealth of valuable educational videos and other materials are publicly available online, we supplement our courses with links to these reference materials where we find they are relevant to the course and will be of value to the student.

What's Included In the Price?

All the content comprising the course is included in the price.  This includes access to the textbooks which are provided online with ereader software--unless you want to buy a paper-version of the textbook, you will not be required to buy any books or additional materials.

What you Will Need

To access the online materials you need some way of getting online. Our materials are compatible with the major platforms including Windows, Android and Apple. You will need a PC, laptop or tablet and an Internet connection.

Self-Paced Learning

You are free to take the course in your own time, on your own terms--on whatever schedule suits you best.  Your enrollment in the course will continue for 12 months.  If you need further time after the 12 months has expired, please request an extension. Please note: the textbook publishers restrict the online licenses to 180 days, so your access to the textbooks will expire 180 days after you start the course.

When You Have Questions

You will be provided with a tutor who will be your primary point of contact with SVBS.  Each course module has an online question and answer forum. When you have a question, you can check the forum to see if the question has been asked before by other students, and the answer provided. If the question is new, submit it in the forum and it will be answered by our faculty, normally within a few hours. SVBS has an escalation process that ensures that even the most advanced, difficult questions can be answered--ultimately, the question can be answered by a leading expert in the field if it cannot be handled by our regular faculty. 

Admission Qualifications

We do not want to restrict our courses to an elite few. Our approach is to make our courses available to any student, any time, anywhere in the World. You will not be asked to provide any transcripts of previous academic qualifications.  If you're interested in learning what we're teaching, you're welcome to become a student at SVBS. 

Completion Requirements

You will take a quiz comprising multiple-choice questions in order to complete each course module. You can take the quiz as many times as you like, and the questions are designed to be educational in their own right. However, you have to answer all the questions correctly in order to successfully complete the course.

Certificates
 
Upon successful completion of each course, you will be awarded a certificate either by Silicon Valley Business School, or another University or Business School--this depends on whether you enrolled directly with SVBS or via one of our University partners.