Saving banks: Pedestrians walk along Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange. Dealmaking has been on recovery mode in 2024 after two down years, as strong stock markets and the end of rate hiking combine to give companies the confidence. — Bloomberg
NEW YORK: Donald Trump’s return to the White House is predicted to seed the ground for more big-ticket mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Trump swept to victory in Tuesday’s US presidential election after defeating Kamala Harris across key battleground states. The win boosted the so-called Trump Trade, sending the S&P and the US dollar higher.
Bankers and lawyers said Trump’s pro-business focus will be a boon for M&A, giving further fuel to the nascent recovery in dealmaking.
There’s “pretty big pent-up demand” for M&A and many companies have been “dusting off their dream deals,” Evercore Inc chairman Ralph Schlosstein said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Wednesday.
Dealmaking is set to be even stronger next year, according to Schlosstein.
“The prospect for cuts to corporate taxes and capital gains that he’s promised will further accelerate what was already a recovering M&A cycle,” said Raul Gutierrez, head of M&A at Truist Securities Inc.
“You should be able to see larger transactions move forward. Some of these had been put on hold given the current antitrust stance and I think you’ll see a greater willingness to test agencies out once the administration takes over.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has been cracking down on deals viewed as having the potential to concentrate corporate power and limit consumer choice.
US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan and the Justice Department’s (DoJ) antitrust division assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter have been testing out new approaches that have made it hard to predict how deals will be received.
Large transactions that have fallen under the lens of regulators include Kroger Co’s near-US$25bil acquisition of fellow grocer Albertsons Cos, which was announced in 2022, as well as Capital One Financial Corp’s planned US$35bil purchase of credit-card company Discover Financial Services and Synopsys Inc’s roughly US$34bil agreed takeover of software developer Ansys Inc.
Shares in Albertsons, Ansys and Discover all rose on Wednesday, outstripping the S&P 500’s gains. Discover, in particular, saw its stock rise as much as 24% in New York.
Dealmakers expect new appointees at federal agencies under Trump to bring a friendlier approach to M&A.
“There’s been a notable shift over the last four years on antitrust so I do think you’ll see pretty meaningful rollback from a number of those policies,” said Eric Rutkoske, head of M&A at Guggenheim Securities LLC.
“I think in this interim period – before there’s a change in the composition of the DoJ and FTC – there will be less willingness to challenge deals.”
There will probably be more deal activity in sectors like industrial, consumer retail and energy, according to Ann Beth Stebbins, a partner on the M&A team at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
“There has been regulatory creep with the antitrust agencies expanding their reach,” Stebbins said. “I think that will be pulled back, which will lead to more predictability and will allow deals to close more quickly.”
The prospect of increased certainty around deals is not only good news for the bankers and lawyers that advise on them, but also merger arbitrage traders who bet on whether or not they’ll get across the line.
The trading strategy has been hampered in recent years, partly because of the more muscular regulatory regime under Biden.
The FTC’s recent win in a case to freeze Tapestry Inc’s US$8.5bil acquisition of fashion peer Capri Holdings Ltd saw some high-profile arbs take a hit.
“It’s a good development which will hopefully reverse some of the Biden overreach implemented by Lina Khan,” said Roy Behren, co-chief investment officer at Westchester Capital Management.
“We expect to see a significant uptick in activity, both because of the removal of the uncertainty overhang as well as a more realistic and welcoming regulatory regime.”
Dealmaking has been on recovery mode in 2024 after two down years, as strong stock markets and the end of rate hiking combine to give companies the confidence, and financial firepower, to pursue transactions. But global M&A values dipped slightly in October, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
It was just the second time they’d been down between September and October in the United States election year since 2000.
The other was in 2008, when Lehman Brothers was collapsing. There’s an expectation that M&A can resume its upward trajectory quickly in the wake of the decisive election result.
“Getting the uncertainty out of the way was important to help unstick some of that, so we’d expect to see more M&A deals getting in the queue and – importantly – closing,” said Sonya Erickson, global chair of Cooley LLP’s business department.
“With the uncertainty removed, and some of the other economic factors that were already in play, it does set us up for a healthy M&A market heading into 2025.”
A Trump win is not without potential downsides for M&A practitioners. The Republican’s agenda of economic nationalism has raised concerns in some quarters about a negative impact on foreign investment in the United States, something that may impact cross-border deals. — Bloomberg
