Michael Frankel may be only 35, but he's seen dealmaking from just about every vantage: as a lawyer at Skadden Arps, as an i-banker at Merrill Lynch and as a corporate development vice president and then general manager at VeriSign Inc.

Those experiences - combined with a knack for academic observation you might expect from the son of two prominent university professors - have provided the basis for a useful new addition to the M&A bookshelf. Published last month by Aspatore Books, Frankel's Deal Teams is a handy, conversational guide to the myriad players and constituencies that interact to get deals done. It will be especially valuable to managers new to deals and junior corporate development staff learning the transactional landscape.

With strategic transactions now a standard corporate tool, those are good groups to reach. "More and more M&A work is being done in-house," says Frankel, who in December joined the business development staff at General Electric Consumer Finance-Americas. By contributing to the general demystification of dealmaking, Deal Teams is likely to help that work go more smoothly. And Frankel means to keep writing. He's already at work on his next book, an M&A how-to with a more technical bent, which John Wiley & Sons expects to publish next year. - Ken Klee

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