What is Target Acquired
It is about deals, but it is really about how the business world moves — why companies buy each other, how capital flows, and what it means for the industries underneath.
We are Ashna and Monil, and Target Acquired started the way most of our conversations do: with one of us sending the other a link and saying “did you see this deal.”
We met working in finance in Mumbai in 2019, and have been sharing links and reports ever since: a deal that did not add up, a strategy that did, a report worth reading, an industry quietly shifting. When we both moved to the US for our MBAs, Ashna to the Simon School in Rochester and Monil to Boston College, that habit came with us. We were recruiting into finance in a market we were still getting to know, and we both wanted the same thing: to walk into any room and actually know what had happened that week, and why it mattered.
Reading the news was good, but a lot of coverage tells you what happened without much on what to make of it, and the good stuff is often buried, paywalled, or written for people who are already ten years in. So we started doing it ourselves — one of us would pull together the deals that mattered, we would argue about them, and we would end up with something we both actually understood.
Between us we have worked on all sorts of deals and corporate finance projects, most recently in investment banking — doing financial and company analysis, valuation, and everything that goes with them. We figured we would put our years in the field to use and share our two cents.
It did not take long to realize we were not the only ones doing this quietly on the side. Plenty of students, career-switchers, and people just trying to break into the industry were piecing the same picture together alone. So we decided to stop keeping it to ourselves.
That is Target Acquired. You don’t need to want a job in M&A, IB, or PE to care about how the business world moves. Every week we go through the activity worth paying attention to and write up what happened and why it matters — in plain language and a format that is easy to digest, whether you already work in this world or you are trying to get into it. Once a week we double-click and take a single deal apart. And the weekly snapshot comes as audio, for when you would rather listen than read.
The weekly brief
The M&A, PE, and market activity that actually mattered this week — what happened, and why it is worth your attention. Cut down to what matters, in plain language.
Read the briefsThe deep dive
Once a week we slow down and take a single deal apart — the reasoning, the numbers, and the parts most coverage skips right past.
Read the deep divesThe audio snapshot
Prefer to listen? The weekly deal snapshot comes as a digital audio version — the same rundown, for the commute, the gym, or the walk to class.
Listen to the podcastThe people behind it.
Ashna Thakkar
Ashna is getting her MBA at the Simon School of Business in Rochester. Before that she spent close to six years in finance back in India across investment banking and PE advisory, plus a stint at a startup working on growth and strategy, and picked up a Master’s in Finance along the way. These days she is doing M&A in tech, interning in Corporate Development at FMG Suite, a PE-backed WealthTech company, where she also works on corporate finance. On the side she teaches valuation and modeling to incoming bankers at Training The Street and runs the Finance & Investment Club at Simon. Outside of work she is happiest mentoring and volunteering, hosting game nights (which she takes more seriously than she will admit), doing karaoke, and talking friends into whatever new café or vegetarian spot she has been meaning to try.
Monil Sanghavi
Monil is getting his MBA at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Before that he spent close to six years in finance in Mumbai, starting on the buy-side before three years on a sell-side banking desk, working across M&A, fundraises, and IPOs in consumer, power, financials, and industrials. He is now interning in M&A at eGateway Capital and is President of the International Student Association at BC. He is slowly chipping away at the CFA and CMT on the side. Outside of work you will find him watching F1, arguing about cricket, or halfway through a documentary.
Do not walk into the next week cold.
A new issue goes out every week, and it is free. Read it or listen to it, whether you are deep in finance already or just trying to make sense of it.