Boardroom ‘Gut Check’ Set to Drive M&A

去年，美国合并和收购市场的两种对比动力学的故事，随着美元价值下降的交易数量。但随着M＆A Spigot开放到2017年底，更大的交易可能有助于今年突出新的景观。

许多交易专家预计美元数量和交易数量都会随着股票市场和经济仍然坚强而上升。他们指出了公司丰富的现金储备和白宫的Laissez-Faire途径，以大多数合并。

心理学是一个关键因素，说Sam Farnham, Wells Fargo & Co.’s head of M&A for the Americas. “There’s a gut check for M&A confidence in the boardroom,” he says. When chief executive officers and company boards are confident about the economy and the stock market, they are generally more confident about doing mergers.

“这就是我们现在所看到的，”Farnam说。“我们的客户感受到这种增长的压力，他们将不得不在刚刚的有机方面看。”

Last year the number of deals in the U.S. climbed to 10,075 — up 5 percent from 2016 — even as volume dropped 13 percent to $1.5 trillion, according to Dealogic. Investors’ appetite for smaller mergers was strong, while larger deals gained momentum in late 2017, despite President Donald Trump’s opposition to AT&T’s agreement to buy Time Warner for nearly $109 billion including债务. The dollar value of M&A for the final two months of 2017 totaled $486 billion, a record for the period, according to Dealogic, which tracks data back to 1995.

“The market was applauding accretive transactions,” meaning ones that would quickly boost earnings for the acquirer, saysStephen Arcano纽约律师事务所，阿尔卑斯山，石板，石板，石板，在纽约的Meagher＆Flom的律师事务所主管。他说，公司正在寻找建造业务的收购，提出，“'”我需要塞一个洞？“”

For some companies, the hole was in technology. In November, for example, electric-car companyTeslaagreed to buy one of its suppliers,Perbix Machine Co.构建高度utomated manufacturing machinery. “Technology is changing everything,” Arcano says. “Previously, in many industries, companies didn’t have to think about directly competing against tech companies, but now that’s increasingly an issue.”

On the regulatory front, the M&A community anticipates Trump will take a favorable stance toward large-scale corporate mergers. The only big acquisition he has opposed is AT&T’s pending purchase of Time Warner. The U.S. Department of Justice announced in November that it had filed an antitrust lawsuit toblock关注的责任将伤害竞争并导致“对数百万美国人的更高价格和更少的创新”。美国地区法院在3月份设立合并审判后，电信公司在一个中说regulatory filing2016年10月宣布的完成该交易的截止日期延长至6月21日。

Trump’s surprise win in the November 2016 presidential election is partly blamed for the slowdown in large deals for most of last year. “It was a reaction to the election,” saysRoger Foltynowicz是一家活动驱动的投资公司水岛首都的货币经理。他说，诸如交易所必须适应新的政策和监管机构，创造一些初步犹豫。

While some M&A experts see Trump’s rejection of the AT&T merger as muddling the regulatory outlook, Foltynowicz says the president has made clear he’s generally supportive of dealmaking. In November, Broadcom announced that it hadofferedto buy Qualcomm in a $130 billion deal, and in December,沃尔特迪斯尼有限公司said it was purchasing 21st Century Fox for $66 billion including debt. Meanwhile, favorable conditions remain for deals to keep flowing this year.

“高现金储备，友好的债务市场，加速经济势头，并在那里仍然存在，”Gina Martin Adams., chief equity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence. “And the tax bill relieves uncertainty.”

She expects activity will be particularly strong in the financial services and media sectors, with the Trump administration’s pullback from the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act likely to encourage bank mergers. “This will allow banks to buy deposits, and that’s what they want to do in this environment,” Foltynowicz says of the regulatory rollback. “This will be a big talking point for our community in the next three to four years.”

Within private equity, M&A fell in 2017 for the second straight year in the U.S., declining about 5 percent from 2016 to $321 billion, according to Dealogic. Still, Foltynowicz says private equity firms’ presence as buyers should be strong this year due to the记录干粉他们积累在筹款中的洪流中。

Wells Fargo’s Farnham sees a growing gap between buyers and sellers in valuation estimates. “We’ve been involved on the buy side where B-quality sellers indignantly tell us we’re way off the market,” he says. “Maybe sellers need to come down.”Jason Brady, CEO of Thornburg Investment Management, views this as a sign that the M&A boom is in its later stages. “When investment bankers are the coolest heads in the room, that’s an interesting dynamic,” he says.