Andrew R. Brownstein is a partner in the corporate group at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum by Mr. Brownstein, Steven A. Rosenblum, Jodi J. Schwartz, Adam O. Emmerich, and Andrew J. Nussbaum.
2015 was a record year for M&A. Global M&A volume hit an all-time high of over $5 trillion, surpassing the previous record of $4.6 trillion set in 2007. U.S. M&A made up nearly 50% of the total. The “mega-deal” made a big comeback, with a record 69 deals over $10 billion, and 10 deals over $50 billion, including two of the largest on record: Pfizer’s $160 billion agreement to acquire Allergan and Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $117 billion bid for SABMiller. Cross-border M&A reached $1.56 trillion in 2015, the second highest volume ever.
A number of factors provided directors and officers with confidence to pursue large, and frequently transformative, merger transactions in 2015. The economic outlook had become more stable, particularly in the United States. Many companies had trimmed costs in the years following the financial crisis, but still faced challenges generating organic revenue growth. M&A offered a powerful lever for value creation through synergies. In a number of cases, the price of a buyer’s stock rose on announcement of an acquisition, as investors rewarded transactions with strong commercial logic, bucking historical trends. Equity prices in 2015 were strong, if flat, providing companies with valuable acquisition currency. For at least the first half of the year, strong appetite from debt investors (particularly for quality credits) and low interest rates enabled acquirors to obtain financing on attractive terms.
