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M&A at a Glance (April 2013)
April 16, 2013 download PDF
Following a strong February, March saw a significant decline in global M&A activity, cutting across both strategic transactions and sponsor-related transactions. While March saw the announcement of another one of the top three biggest sponsor acquisitions of the year so far (KKR's $3.74 billion acquisition of Gardner Denver), the number of deals overall remained relatively flat and average deal value declined substantially from February, particularly among strategic transactions. See Figure 1. Reverse break fees measured as a percentage of equity value increased in March, continuing to evidence an inverse relationship between deal size and the size of break fees as a percentage of deal value. See Figure 7. The other significant story in March was the bidding war for Dell, Inc., which heavily impacted some of the data points due to the inclusion of these large multiple offers. The volume of strategic transactions and sponsor-related transactions for March would each be considerably lower if the new Dell offers were excluded.