January 19, 2023
M&A Trends: Last Year Wasn’t Great for “Mega Deals” Either
According to an analysis by Bloomberg Law’s Emily Rouleau, “mega deals” didn’t escape the overall downturn in M&A activity last year:
After reaching an annual deal count of 46 in boom-year 2021—which was one of the highest annual counts of mega deals on record, according to Bloomberg data—a total of 34 M&A mega deals, valued at $10 billion or greater, were announced in 2022. Of 2022’s 34 mega deals, 27 were controlling-stake transactions, four were spinoffs, two were transactions for a minority or additional stake, and one was a joint venture deal. Last year’s controlling-stake mega deal count was also the lowest count since 2017 and below the 10-year average count of 32 transactions for that subset of deals.
The news wasn’t all bad for M&A’s behemoths – while annual mega deal volume dropped by nearly $100 billion from $840 billion in 2021 to $749 billion in 2022, the average size of the mega deals that did get done was $22 billion, which is higher than the average in 2020 ($19 billion) and 2021 ($18 billion).
– John Jenkins