M&A Forecast for 2010 — update
Well, we’ve got more than one quarter of the year gone. Is it really possible to see more clearly how 2010 will develop for the M&A markets? I think so, and one reason is the behavioural aspects of the market that cause it to be ‘sticky’, as discussed several weeks ago in an article I...
Politics and M&A
There’s a proposal in the UK to revise the rules governing public takeovers. This has been prompted by the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft, but has been bubbling under the surface for years and gains attention each time there’s a large, contested offer. The forthcoming election has given the proposals new life as well. There...
Joint Ventures: Are they a viable alternative to a full merger or acquisition?
Much of the research and reporting in M&A get done about the headline-grabbing large acquisitions and mergers. However, the unsung hero of corporate alliances are joint ventures. But we expect to see more of these, including some very big JVs. Note the announcement on 1 February of a $12 billion joint venture between oil companies...
Another view on the M&A Market in 2010 and 2011
On Thursday, 18 March, the Financial Times in a special section (‘Deals and Dealmakers’) had an article that I authored entitled: ‘A tough challenge for M&A markets’. In it, I argue that that a number of unavoidable behavioural factors are the principal impediments to a rising M&A market: just as the growth of the market...
‘Upside Risk’ in M&A
I saw a recent posting on the possibility of the stock markets having a ‘buyers’ panic’ as occurred in late summer 1982. At that time, the market increased by 37% in less than two months, having started with an increase of almost 20% as institutional buyer kicked off the rally, which then had retail buyers...
M&A market not doing as badly as you think
Where have all the mega-deals gone? There’s certainly been a dearth of deals since year-end. It’s been a long time since I’ve opened up the newpaper in the morning and seen any front-page headlines about a new deal. In fact, it’s been more about cancelled deals (IPOs such as New Look, Travelport and Merlin) or...
M&A Volumes were up, but what’s happened?
Typically, the volume of deals in the first quarter of the year are higher than at other times of the year. In fact, if you look at the largest deals since the mid-1990′s (all around $60 billion or more),over one-third of them were announced in January and almost half in the first quarter. Obviously, we...
Mergers & Acquisitions and Behavioural Finance
I’ve not seen much discussion of the behavioural finance aspects of M&A, so it was refreshing to see this noted in a recent article in Q6, the publication in Fall 2009 of the Yale School of Management (full disclosure: I am a graduate of the charter class of that school). In that article entitled ‘What...
Symmetry of M&A in the last Decade (2000-2009)
The first decade of the new millennium is over. Happy New Year everyone! So along with so many other observers of the financial markets, I would like to comment on the past ten years. Some of these comments have appeared elsewhere – and in fact from me as a number of publications have asked me...
Worst Mergers or Acquisitions of all Time
With the year-end coming, there’s lots of talk about the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of not just the past year, but the first decade of the new millenium. Naturally, this talk then moves to which deal was THE worst in either 2009 or the period from 2000 to 2009.
I’ve certainly discussed this...
Measuring M&A Deal Success
How do you measure M&A deal success?
This has certainly been the focus of many studies, whether in academia or amongst practitioners. We’ve looked at it here on this blog (‘What is success in an M&A deal?‘) and also in our book (Intelligent M&A: Navigating the mergers and acquisitions minefield).
It was thus with great interest...
Football team acquisitions in the UK