Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructurings, 6th Edition

CHAPTER ONE1

Introduction

RECENT M&A TRENDS

The pace of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) picked up in the early 2000s after a short hiatus in 2001. The economic slowdown and recession in the United States and elsewhere in 2001 brought an end to the record-setting fifth merger wave. This period featured an unprecedented volume of M&As. It followed on the heels of a prior record-setting merger wave—the fourth. This one in the 1990s, however, was very different from its counterpart in the previous decade. The fifth wave was truly an international one, and it featured a heightened volume of deals in Europe and, to some extent, Asia, in addition to the United States. The prior merger waves had been mainly a U.S. phenomenon. When the fourth merger wave ended with the 1990–1991 recession, many felt that it would be a long time before another merger wave like it would occur. However, after a relatively short recession and an initially slow recovery, the economy picked up speed in 1993, and by 1994 the world was on a path to another record-setting merger period. This wave would feature deals that would make the ones of the 1980s seem modest. There would be many megamergers and many cross-border deals involving U.S. buyers and sellers, but also many large deals not involving U.S. firms.

Figure 1.1 shows that both European and U.S. M&A volume began to rise in 2003 and by 2006–2007 had reached ...