Process and Price Evolution
Show that the board ran a process, and what the price did while it ran.
Seat
IB
Level
Analyst / Associate
Runtime
~25 min
Output
Process timeline page: Excel + slide
What this helps you accomplish
The record of the negotiation: who was contacted, how many signed an NDA, who bid in each round, and what each bid was worth per share. The uplift from first indication to final bid is the clearest evidence a board tested the price rather than accepting the first number, which is why the page sits early in a fairness deck and in the background section of a proxy.
What you get
Not a description of an output. The file itself, in the conventions a banker, a PE associate or a hedge fund analyst already reads without being told.
{TICKER}_process-summary.xlsx
Excel workbook
- 1
Inputs
Shares, net debt, the unaffected price and the final offer, so every bid can be premium-tested against the same reference
- 2
Process counts
Strategic and financial parties contacted, NDAs signed, first-round and second-round bids
- 3
Timeline ($ per share where an event carried a price)
Dated events with the party and the price, each bid’s premium to unaffected and its uplift over the previous bid
- 4
PowerPoint
One slide: a column chart of the acquirer’s bid by round with a KPI rail of the counts
Where the numbers come from
From the filings: the header only, which is shares, net debt and prices. Every filed figure resolves to its form, period, page, the printed value and a link into the filing on EDGAR. Not from filings: every timeline row and bid, which arrive as illustrative placeholders the build warns about. Replace them from the background section of the merger proxy. Assumptions are listed on the slide’s source line under "Not from filings", so an assumed input is never read as a filed one.
Run it yourself
python3 skills/deal-slides/build.py process-summary --ticker BSX --offer 60Delegate · Verify · Decide
The core L3VLUP principle: AI output is never automatically correct. Know what to hand off, what to check, and what only you can own.
Delegate
AI is good enough to do this.
- • Filling the header from the filings with a citation on each figure
- • Computing each bid’s premium to unaffected and its uplift over the previous bid
- • Ordering the timeline and grouping the priced events into rounds
- • Building the branded slide with the bid-by-round chart
Verify
AI accelerates you here, but a professional checks the work.
- • Every date and price against the proxy background section
- • That the final bid in the timeline equals the offer used elsewhere in the book
- • That the counts agree: NDAs are never fewer than the bids, and the first-round count matches the priced first-round events
- • That a bid lower than the one before it is real rather than a transcription error
Decide
Judgment the human owns. This is the skill.
- • Which events belong on the page and which are noise in a six-month process
- • How to characterise the parties contacted without naming who cannot be named
- • Whether the process reads as a genuine market check, and what to say if it does not
Inputs required
- Company name or ticker
- The final offer per share and the unaffected price with its date
- The dated timeline: parties contacted, NDAs, bids by round with prices
- Your own numbers where you would rather not use the default
The workflow
- 1
Resolve the company
A ticker or a name fills the header: shares, net debt and the prices every bid is measured against.
- 2
Build the header from filings
The rows are placeholders, so the header is the only part a filing can fill. The build says so on the page.
- 3
Replace the timeline
The background section of the merger proxy carries the dates, the parties and the prices. Keep the adviser’s own round labels.
- 4
Reconcile the counts
Parties contacted, NDAs signed and bids received have to be consistent with the priced events in the timeline.
- 5
Read the uplift
First indication to final bid, in cash and in percentage. That number is the argument the page exists to make.
Run this skill
Any listed company, anywhere. Ticker or name.
Quality checklist
The output isn’t done until every box ticks.
- verify reports zero errors and every derived cell is a formula on blue inputs
- Units are on every table header and the subtitle names the currency and period
- The unaffected price carries its date, and any VWAP says how many days it covers
- The final bid equals the offer price used elsewhere in the book
- Each bid is at or above the previous one, or a negative uplift is explained in a sentence
- Every priced event carries a round label, so the chart reads as rounds rather than as descriptions