Irecently took a European executive to his first U.S. basketball game. Although I had received two tickets in the first row, for the first half of the game I took him to seats up much higher that I had also received tickets for. I wanted him to get an overview of the game before getting close to see the details. My concern was that if we started by being in the front row, he would get lost in the specifics without understanding the overall process.

In the business context of this book, over the past several decades, I have been involved in many major mergers and acquisitions—some of them worth over $1 billion. In other cases, clients have moved in the opposite direction by selling off or closing subsidiaries, divisions, branches, and offices. During that time I have often had clients ask for a standard reference book that they could use to under-stand the process before undertaking a merger, acquisition, or divestiture.