Guest Lecture by Mr. Harish Hulyalkar

Over the years, Mergers and Acquisitions have helped many companies improve existing production and marketing operations to propel growth. In fact, M&A activity has become an important ingredient of business strategy.

And hence, on Sunday, 27th January, 2013, the SIMSREE Corporate Relations Committee welcomed Mr. Harish Hulyalkar - Director, Mergers & Acquisitions at Citi Investment Banking to give the students 'An overview of Mergers and Acquisitions' from a career and practitioner's perspective. He has been part of the advisory team for the Diageo-USL transaction, Wipro demerger, Vedanta group reorganisation and Moody's acquisition of Copal Partners.

Mr. Harish commenced the session by explaining some of the skill sets required to succeed in this field and where such skill sets may be applied. He gave a broad overview of the functioning of an investment bank and also showed the students how M&A fits into the business model. He then went on to highlight some of the common trends seen in M&A activity over the last two years. He noted that the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy has had a negative impact on the M&A flows into Asia in 2012. Mr. Harish then cited some of the primary reasons which drive a company to be invloved with M&A activity. Lastly, he touched upon the process followed while doing buy and sell-side transactions and showed how a financial advisor can add significant value to such transactions.

It was a very interactive and enthusiastic session and the students will surely look forward to more of such lectures in the future.