We all know that Microsoft walked in the Yahoo deal but late last week, before the outcome was known,
Marc Andreessen wrote an amazing M&A tutorial. It's one of the best I've ever seen and used the deal to provide context. Many of the people who read this blog are recent MBA's and would probably benefit from reading this article. For better or worse, a lot of these mechanics are not taught in school. We're just lucky that people like Andreessen, the Co-Founder of Netscape and Opsware, cover these things in a forum that week can participate in.