DealBook Blog: DealBook: M&A Deals Hit Record in 2007
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Despite a sharp decline in dealmaking at mid-year, merger volume in 2007 hit a record $1.57 trillion in the United States, up 5.5 percent from the previous year, according to research firm Thomson Financial. But, for the first time in five years, U.S. lagged deal-making in Europe, where mergers totaled $1.78 trillion. Globally, mergers totaled [...].
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This week saw three merger deals worth about $60 billion--including one that ranks as the largest software merger in history.
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(InfoWorld) - While consolidation can be a sign of a mature, slowing market, the M&A activity happening now, especially seen in context of this week's six-year Nasdaq Composite Index high, signals confidence in IT and prospects for growth. High-tech mergers and acquisitions hit a record number last year and the trend continues. Wednesday, Cisco Systems announcedÂ it will make a $135 million acquisition of Reactivity, a maker of XML gateway and security hardware to manage Web services. Tuesday,Â SAP said it would acquire Pilot Software, a supplier of strategy management software, while Wind River SystemsÂ saidÂ it bought FSMLabs' embedded Linux technology for real-time applications. SAP rival Software AG said Wednesday thatÂ it will be focusing on SOA products and services and plans acquisitions to broaden its product portfolio. Companies outside of traditional enterprise IT are also part of the M&A trend. Satellite radio operators Sirius Satellite RadioÂ and XM Satellite Radio Holdings, with total revenue of about $1.5 billion, announced Monday thatÂ they plan to merge. Though different sectors within IT are subject to unique market situations, globalization and trends in financing are the prime forces driving M&A, according to Eric Gebaide, managing director of Innovation Advisors, a New York investment firm. After the "general meltdown" in 2001, it's been hard for small companies, especially those under $75 million in revenue, to go public, Gebaide said. This makes them acquisition targets. "Another factor is the need to start having global solutions," Gebaide said. The globalization of technology is underscored by an Innovation Advisers study, based on using data sourced from Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, that shows that the total percentage of U.S.-based companies participating in M&A activity continued to decline to 51.6 percent from 57.9 percent in 2005. Overall M&A transactions hit a record last year: The total number of transactions in 2006 was 4,669, exceeding 2005's total of 3,455, and the 2000 total of 2,871 deals at the peak of the dot-com boom, according to Innovations Advisers. But the total amount of dollars spent on M&A last year was less than in 2000: $295.8 billion, while the 2000 transaction total was $490.3 billion. Company valuations are more reasonable now than in 2000. Recent deals show software companies are being valued at two to four times revenue, while service companies are valued at one to two times revenue, Gebaide said. Historically, these numbers are more normal then the valuations of the dot-com boom. Meanwhile, services companies are forecasting solid revenue growth this year -- a sign that users are investing in IT, Gebaide points out. The Nasdaq close on Wednesday, at 2518.42, was the highest in six years. On Thursday it closed up again, at 2524.94. Coming right after earnings season, this is another sign that confidence is high. Although overall global revenue growth in IT is expected to be modest compared to the dot-com boom --- most estimates peg IT growth this year at about 6.5 percent -- the expansion is likely to be more sustainable than it was seven years ago. Though the IT market may not be as exuberant as it was in 2000, many investors are certainly willing to settle for more stable, rational growth. Â
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Investor's Business Daily - One of the questions swirling around the global credit crisis is how it will impact private-equity deals, which ran at a record pace for much of the year.
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Wall Street may be facing its worst financial storm in years, but billionaire buyout king Henry Kravis is forging ahead with the biggest deals in U.S. history. Kravis's firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, has made deals for $123 billion in acquisitions this year, more than its three chief rivals combi...
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The value of mergers and acquisitions in Virginia, Maryland and the District hit record highs last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. But even more striking is the growth of private-equity involvement in these deals, which more than doubled in each of the three jurisdictions.
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Hong Kong property firm Chinese  Estates Holdings Ltd. (0127.HK) is in talks with investors on a  possible buyout of the firm, valued at more than US$4 billion,  sending its shares up as much as 30 percent to a record high.
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Nearly 400 profit warnings were issued by UK listed firms in 2007, including retailers and leisure companies.
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Let's face it. Private equity firms hogged the deal-making spotlight in 2007, first with their high-flying buyouts and then with their frantic efforts to salvage them. But corporate acquirers, otherwise known as strategics, weren't exactly on vacation. Just ask Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation pulled off an audacious takeover of Dow Jones that many said was [...].
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The dollars were flying in 2007, whether it was from gamers grabbing for Halo and Guitar Hero, or Vivendi shelling out for Activision.
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When I sat down for my annual review of what I've written over the past year, something jumped out at me. Usually, I write about widely diversified subjects. But in 2007, I devoted an inordinate number of columns to the shenanigans of leveraged buyout firms and the attempts by the world's central...
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With merger and acquisition fever hitting new highs, which deals will be the ones to work out?
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Private equity firms are setting records in the size of Asian buyout funds, adding to an existing pool of more than $35 billion that is waiting to be invested in deals in the region.
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NEW YORK, May 30 -- The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index hit a record high today, marking the end of a four-year healing period for U.S. stocks battered by the burst of the tech bubble, the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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BusinessWeek Online - It sounds like a tale of woe for Europe's investment banks. One of the biggest takeover attempts in British retail history -- retail tycoon Philip Green's &#36;17 billion bid for iconic Marks &amp; Spencer Group PLC -- came to naught. A much-anticipated boom in initial public offerings has fizzled. And after a drought that started in 2001, merger-and-acquisition activity remains in a funk. But bankers in Europe's financial capital, the City of London, and its auxiliary, Canary Wharf, aren't crying in their pints. ...
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The broker breaks records with its third-quarter results.
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NEWS Corp led the sharemarket into record territory yesterday as investors here grew accustomed to the US way of corporate control, taking Monday&#39;s poison pill move by chairman Rupert Murdoch in their stride.