Merger mania returns?
Just when DD thought we might’ve seen an end to the M&A boom, more than $40bn in deals from industrial software to trucking and decorative paints to telecoms got the fourth quarter off to a big start.
Schneider Electric’s $23.7bn acquisition of US engineering software provider PTC, the French industrial conglomerate’s biggest acquisition, led the charge on this Merger Monday.
The deal, first reported on Sunday by the FT, is the biggest Europe-to-US deal since 2021 and the second-biggest American acquisition by a French company on record, according to Dealogic.
Meanwhile, logistics firm CH Robinson agreed to buy trucking brokerage firm RXO for $5.8bn and Dulux owner AkzoNobel sold its south-east Asian decorative paints business to Nippon Paint for $1.35bn.
In the UK, some big brand names also made a splash, despite one being small and the other being history. Beyond BT’s acquisition of TalkTalk, Sainsbury’s held talks earlier this year with private equity-owned rival Morrisons over a potential multibillion-pound UK supermarkets deal before walking away, the FT reported.
Some of the challenges DD flagged in our third-quarter wrap hold true: rising interest rates, AI anxiety and midterm elections threaten to derail a blockbuster year for mergers and acquisitions.
But some astute readers couldn’t help but notice the dichotomy of our headlines on Monday, with one top banker sending a “funny” with the tears of joy emoji when he woke up to a $20bn-plus transatlantic deal next to our headline about the threats of an early end to the M&A boom.
It’s a good reminder that when it gets eerily quiet, you should get ready for some surprises.