M&A for Management Consultants & Business Analysts (Udemy.com)
A practical guide on how to do analyses during mergers & acquisition projects
Created by: Asen Gyczew
Last updated September 2026
What you will learn
- How to conduct fast and efficiently analyses in Excel during M&A projects
- How to select potential targets for M&A
- How to estimate in Excel potential synergies from M&A
- How to conduct commercial due diligence
- What market research tools are useful during M&A and due diligence?
- Essential Valuation techniques used in M&A
- When mergers and acquisitions make sense.
- Create a business model of the firm in Excel
- Analyze business units
How it compares
Against the other 1,210 rated Udemy courses in Business on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.4 out of 5higher than 27% of them
- Reviews835#505 of 1,211 by number of reviews
- Length8.1 hourslonger than 84% of them
- Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 93% of them
Course Description
What is the aim of this course?
Consulting firms are hired very often to help with Mergers & Acquisitions. Those projects are difficult as you have to deliver results fast and you have to deal with many stakeholders. You not only have to help select potential targets, and model businesses in Excel, but also you will have to estimate the potential benefits of M&A, the value of the firm, and forecast the development of the acquired firms. In this course, I will teach how to perform fast and efficiently different types of analyses during M&A projects.
In the course you will learn the following things:
What kind of analyses you may have to do during the M&A project
How to Select Potential Targets for M&A using Excel
How to create a financial model in Excel for M&A purposes
How to estimate the value of the M&A target
How to estimate potential synergies coming from the M&A process
How to conduct commercial due diligence
What kind of market research tools you can use during due diligence
This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion in additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 300 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.
I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, and tools that we use. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, and materials shown in the lectures so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you or your team in your work.
Why did I decide to create this course?
M&A projects are fast-paced and require a lot of hard work. You have to also master different skills and tools that you will be using during such projects especially: financial modeling, market research, identifying synergies, and potential improvements. Most firms, don’t give you the full toolbox that you need. This may lead to huge frustration during M&A projects and a lot of inefficiencies.
Therefore, I have decided to create this course that will help students understand or refresh the main skills and tools that they need during M&A projects. The course will give you the knowledge and insight into real-life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do it during M&A projects. You will master how to analyze data and draw conclusions from the analyses. On top of that, you will also master the essential information related to valuation.
To sum it up, I believe that if you want to become a world-class Management Consultant or Business Analyst you have to have a pretty decent understanding of M&A projects and analyses done during such projects. That is why, I highly recommend this course to Management Consultants or Business Analysts, especially those who did not finish business school or Economics. The course will help you become an expert in M&A analyses on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.
In what way will you benefit from this course?
The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of analyses, tricks, and hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you understand, and analyze businesses. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:
What kind of analyses you may have to do during the M&A project
How to Select Potential Targets for M&A using Excel
How to create a financial model in Excel for M&A purposes
How to estimate the value of the M&A target
How to estimate potential synergies coming from the M&A process
How to conduct commercial due diligence
What kind of market research tools you can use during due diligence
You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.
How the course is organized?
Currently, you will find the following things in the course:
Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course as well as some general info on how the course is organized
When M&A is done? Mergers & acquisitions are done for a lot of reasons by different players. In this section, we will discuss how they differ and why they invest so much money in M&A.
M&A process. In this brief section, I will shed some light on what the M&A process looks like.
Selecting Potential Targets. M&A starts with picking the right targets that make sense. In this section, I will show you how you can do that in practice using Excel. We will conduct analyses of potential targets in different industries.
Modeling Businesses in Excel. During M&A projects you will quite often have to create a model of the business in Excel. I will show you how to do that using a few examples.
Valuation. During consulting projects, especially devoted to M&A or due diligence you will have to evaluate a specific business. In this section, I will show you examples of how to do it in practice.
Instructor Details
- 4.4 Rating
835 Reviews
Asen Gyczew
Expert in performance improvement, scaling businesses, and turning-around companies with significant experience both in management as well as in supervision of medium size companies (EUR 20 – 500 million) and startups. I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Investment Directors, CEO, Partners in PE and VC funds, Sales and Marketing Directors, Operational Directors, COO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Supply Chain Directors, Board Members, etc.
Functional experience: performance improvement, strategy development, startups, intrapreneurship, post-merger integration and cost reduction, due diligence, turn-arounds, PMO;
Industry experience: SMCG (domestic appliances, furniture, ceramic tiles), FMCG (cosmetics, juice, meat), retail (electronics, convenience shops, pharmaceuticals, DIY, vending, fashion, toys), B2B (aluminum system, plywood, alcohol, reagents, loading systems), services (MRO, consulting, outsourcing), foodtech, marketplaces
Countries: Poland, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine
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Reviews
By Monica on 10/9/2025
Great course! Clear explanations and practical insights make it a must for any consultant or analyst looking to deepen their understanding of M&A
By Aman Shah on 7/22/2025
Course material is good, but a bit basic. Few typos and mistakes in grammar and language takes away from the credibility of the material
By Blaine badenhorst on 4/1/2025
Very simple approach to such a broad topic, that I have been trying to understand for weeks on end. Also, the access to resources appears to all be readily available which in most cases is exhausting in trying to create. This is a big bonus together with the session being conducted on these templates as you progress. Although in some templates I saw a difference in the tabs presented vs the resources, but not sure if there were some updates missed. But still a very good course. 5 stars still :)
By Eduardo Melchor on 6/24/2024
Definitivamente si es una buena opción, pues me clarifica parte del proceso de evaluación de una M&A.
By Turan Rzazade on 8/25/2023
So I personally think this course is suitable for those, who are familiar with various valuation methodologies, business modelling, looking for precedents transactions and peer companies. I would say this is a great refresher course, if you've already done FMVA for example. However if you are looking to learn business modelling, valuation, etc. - this course won't be much help as it provides ready business models and excel files. One way to go around this, would be to blank the formula cells and try to dervive the EV and other values yourself. This course does little to actually take you though the process. I found the theoretical knowledge not deep enough either. I'd give this course 5/10, as it just provides you with the information. If you think about explaining valuation in 28 minutes - it's really quite something. You could also do it in 5 or 10 hours. The difference would be the depth that you go into the concepts with.
By Jo Jones on 3/2/2023
I have been unable to download the spredsheet so am havig to rely on seein thre oneson the courdse slides my problem that is, just cant biggerise the font size od the excel sheet o not te bet but i can do it again later when I am on my bigger screen, on my PC in the office so no problems in the end thanks
By Wojtek Pawlak on 1/13/2023
So far, I'm getting a great deal of valuable information from the course and can clearly see how to use certain techniques to make my work better.
By Rafał Bajer on 8/29/2022
I totally enjoyed the course, the teacher was fantastic, the course content was detailed and easy to understand.
By Hristo Popov on 3/24/2022
The course is great. I will highly recommended to everyone who desire to build a fundamental knowledge and skills regarding this topic.
By Jacek Basior on 2/24/2022
The course has a lot of knowledge and nice easy examples. The voice of the teacher is well understood.I recommend
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 88 / 100












