The more the other side knows about the ZOPA, the less effective anchoring becomes.

in the event that someone else (read: Samsung) bid for AuthenTec, Apple could pay $138 million (= 38 percent of the total acquisition price) to acquire a nonexclusive license to certain fingerprint recognition technologies. So, if Apple acquired AuthenTec, Apple could keep the fingerprint technology out of Samsung’s hands; but if Samsung acquired

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practitioners consider the magic number to be somewhere between five and eight bidders.

Competition for the deal must be deployed in a nuanced way—seemingly small process choices can have big substantive implications.

“contingent contracts” in the negotiation lingo, have three major benefits:6 1. They align the incentives of the parties. In the Frasier negotiation, once a ratings-based incentive is built into the contract, Paramount has a strong financial incentive to produce shows that keep the ratings up, which is exactly what NBC wants too. 2. They allow the

when the number of potential buyers is large, use an auction to maximize value, but beware that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

To bid in a disciplined way, you trade the likelihood of winning against the profits from winning. Some sophisticated dealmakers do this instinctively.

Thinking about where we wanted to end up, we started with a number that got us there as a midpoint.