Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity Implosion

I have been reading Mr. Davidoff's columns for a very long time, so needless to say I was eager to pick up a copy of this book when I came around to it. I found the style of the book,, illustrating key concepts surrounding deal-making structures through real-life (often fast-paced and adversarial) case studies, to be very engaging and informative. In addition, I think that many of his predictions on where M&A would head have at least in part held true. Either way, I would certainly recommend this book.

This book delivers on its promise to provide an insiders view of a history of deal making up to the present. And I've never read such a thorough analysis of the practice and implications of Material Adverse Change clauses. It was simply excellent. Given my rating, I clearly liked this work. My only criticism is that it read like two books. The first two-thirds were as described above. That last third covered the well worn path of the 2008 financial crisis (Bear bailout and Lehman Brothers collapse, etc.). It seemed disjointed from the rest of the book and, since the crisis has been covered so extensively in other works, it seemed tired here especially in comparison to the fresh insights Davidoff shared earlier in the book. But to be clear, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Steven Davidoff is one of the most perceptive observers of the legal side of the M&A world. If you're a corporate lawyer and you aspire to be an active participant in dealmaking rather than a mere scrivener, you should read "Gods at War." With its account of deal mechanics and the recent history of the takeover markets, including what transpired during the financial crisis, it provides a valuable big-picture perspective on how deals are made or not made.

This book is ok but not great. It is mostly focused on a historical review of key deals in and around the credit crisis. While this may be what you are looking for, it doesn't really help practitioners like me very much. Most of the content is high level commentary on facts rather than a deep-dive into interesting aspects of deals. That said there are a couple of sections where the author offers an interesting point of view on such aspects - the MAC clauses and the thinking behind reverse break-up fees. I found these two to be very informative.

I had great expectations for "Gods at War". I am an M&A practitioner in Latin America and have followed Professor Davidoff's Deal Professor blog for some time. The legal analysis in the blog is often (way) beyond me, but I appreciate its tremendous insight. My admiration for the blog raised my expectations for "Gods at War".These expectations proved, most unfortunately, unwarranted. The book tries to weave a thread across the chapters but is clumsy in doing so. It may just have been better to make this a collection of columns. Prof Davidoff tries to make a big deal about the influence of "personality" in transactions. But the evidence he provides for this seems that garnered from reading press clippings on deals, not any insider perspective. The book even had the irriting typo here and there. The lack of editing shows in several chapters: Prof Davidoff tells a takeover story in the first half of a chapter (where things do pick up), and then goes on to sort of paraphrase the messages in the second half. Most grating of all was the comparison of why deals fail or not by comparing Microsoft's handling of Yahoo with InBev's of Anheuser Busch: the conclusions may even be correct but yet again the analyses and evidence provided are unconvincing and unoriginal. All in all the impression I'm ultimately left with is the the book is an attempt to cash in on the success of the blog

Gods of War is must read book for those looking to understand a huge segment of the financial markets today. If you're an avid ready of Dealbook, WSJ, or the FT and want to understand the mechanisms behind some of the larger mergers and aquisitions of the last ten years then this is your book.

This is the best book out there on the transactional aspects of PE.

This book was interesting at the beginning, but the needless typos and incoherent organization detracted from the wealth of information quickly. I finally gave up in one of the final chapters when I found that the typos were so egregious they rendered sentences meaningless. This is unfortunate: there is a lot of good stuff in here, but even a cursory editing job would have made it significantly more readable and useful. Clearly there was a rush to get the book to the press, and that rush cost the book dearly in terms of quality. There's got to be something better out there.

This book is thoroughly researched and informative. The author is very good at separating fact from speculation. For anybody interested in the legal detail surrounding large takeover deals, including government bailouts this is the perfect read.

I would recommend this book to any one who has an interest in both the trends that have led up to the Financial Crises of 2008-2011, and the evolution of the PE industry. Although many a book has been written on the former subject, this presentation of the PE industry is relatively novel. Davidoff has done an excellent job in making the "cause and effect" evolution of the PE industry and the legislation governing it come to life, and explaining the history of the deal strucutre.Furthermore, by using a number of deals and cases as examples, Davidoff has managed to make a potentially boring subject very interesting.  Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity ImplosionGods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity Implosion

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