Our M&A lawyers are among the most experienced and effective in the world. We represent many of the world's largest publicly traded and privately held companies, as well as leading private equity firms on their most important mergers, acquisitions and takeover transactions.
M&A at a Glance (June 2012)
June 15, 2012
We are pleased to attach the June issue of Paul, Weiss's M&A at a Glance publication. May's M&A volumes in the U.S. and globally are holding steady, and in fact, U.S. M&A volume is up significantly compared to the figures that we saw for March 2012. Notwithstanding this, the megadeals remain elusive and we note that the largest five U.S. deals announced during the last 12 months were all in 2011; and other than the failed Coty bid for Avon, there have been no comparable sized deals so far in 2012. In other developments, we note that the use of stock as consideration decreased in May as compared to April and over the last 12 months, perhaps indicating some hesitancy to use stock as currency for M&A due to continued economic volatility and uncertainty and the related capital market effects (as exemplified by the 1,000+ point decline in the DJIA from an almost 52-week high of 13,279 on May 1st to 12,119 on June 1st). While the markets have recovered somewhat since the beginning of June, it remains to be seen whether the climb will continue and whether that translates into more stock deals.