La valutazione d'azienda nelle operazioni di Leveraged Buy-Out

The Leveraged Buy-Out (LBO) is a mean to favourite the transfer of control of a business in many situations: from a typical firm acquisition to a business proprietorship transfer between family members, supported or not by a financial operator (like a private equity firm). In this article the main financial techniques that can be utilized in a LBO valuation are analyzed, introducing the critical distinction between the required and the expected return on debt, taking into account the recent evolution of the option pricing theories applied to debt valuation. Using a practical exemplification, it is showed the ways to apply a DCF valuation in its main versions. The typical DCF/APV application, proposed by literature for LBO valuation, is consistent only with a pure CAPM environment where the cost of default for debt is none and consequently there is no distinction between the required and the expected return on debt. If you want to realize a sort of hybrid valuation, using the required (nominal) cost for debt and adjusted the cost of equity only for the systematic component of the risk of debt, the APV is not easily reconciled with the other DCF applications (DCF/WACC and DCF/FCFE), implied some caution in an exclusive utilization of the APV methodology in a LBO valuation.