MASTER: a case based-design to augment corporate mergers and acquisitions decisions

The work on AI financial services applications has now moved into the second-generation of expert systems. This paper briefly reviews some general development and discusses a hybrid design called MASTER. MASTER provides decision aid for M&A professionals. The hybrid employs a cooperating mix of rules and case-based reasoning to provide advice on prospective mergers. The MASTER knowledge base uses several public mergers and acquisitions data sources and includes knowledge derived from experts in the M&A field. Discussion is couched in terms of an ongoing effort to understand the early phase of the mergers and acquisition process and provide reasoning support at multiple levels. Finally, implementation, research issues and directions for future work are discussed