M&A Titans. The pioneers who shaped the M&A industry.
Brett Cole's book profiles the people who built the modern transaction business: the lawyers, bankers, financiers, and operators who turned mergers and acquisitions from a craft practiced by a few firms into a global discipline. The patterns they left behind still shape how lower-middle-market deals get done today.
When you meet someone at an M&A event, you exchange a card. The card has a QR code that leads here. This page is the small reciprocal gift: a reading guide to the figures who shaped the industry we both work in.
Below is the cast. If you have a favorite among them, or a story about the deal era they shaped, write to us. We collect those.
A selection from the book
High-yield debt and the financing of the modern leveraged buyout.
The poison pill and the legal architecture of takeover defense.
Lazard, the city of New York rescue, and the role of the patient advisor.
Skadden Arps and a generation of hostile and friendly transactions.
First Boston, Wasserstein Perella, and the choreography of the modern deal.
KKR and the institutionalization of private equity buyouts.
If the QR code brought you here, the field notes will keep you here.
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