A New Way to Think

14

M&A

You need to give value to get value.

In 2015, less than a decade after a global financial crisis, the business world set a record for mergers and acquisitions. The value of deals eclipsed the previous record, set in 2007, which had surpassed an earlier peak in 1999. And the party is still in full swing, despite a global pandemic and political turmoil in the United States and Europe. Volume increased in 2016 over 2015, and 2017 over 2016. Six of the seven top years all-time for M&A activity were 2015–2020.

One of the manifestations of the M&A frenzy is the emergence of the special-purchase acquisition company, or SPAC, which first appeared in the 1990s but lay largely dormant until recently with fewer than twenty SPAC initial public ...