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M&A at a Glance
Practices
April 16, 2012
We are pleased to share with you the inaugural issue of M&A at a Glance, a new Paul, Weiss publication. This monthly newsletter will provide information on trends in the M&A marketplace as well as structural and legal issues that arise in M&A transactions.
In this first issue, we make the following observations regarding M&A activity in March 2012 (based on Dealogic and MergerMetrics data):
- Overall M&A activity by dollar volume decreased across all sectors (global, U.S., strategic and sponsor-related). See Figure 1. Our own anecdotal experience was, however, that March was busy, indicating that the level of announced transactions may increase in the coming months.
- Technology, healthcare, natural resources and energy deals continued to figure prominently in M&A transactions last month and over the last 12 months. See Figure 2.
- The "mega deals" remain absent. The last time that the average value of the top five largest U.S. public mergers in a particular month broke US$5 billion was October 2011. See Figure 3.
We note that two out of the top five deals in March involved a non-U.S. acquirer, which is indicative of the prominence of crossborder transactions even in the U.S. M&A market. See Figure 4.