Contact: Brenon Daly
As we flip the calendar to the final month of 2009, it’s worth noting that December is almost always a quiet month for M&A. That was particularly true last December, which saw just $6bn of spending on tech acquisitions. The spending level represented a scant 2% of the total $301bn of spending on deals in 2008. (If the month had recorded its representative one-twelfth (8%) of the annual total, spending would have come in at roughly $25bn.)
Of course, last December was a pretty bleak time, with investment banks reeling and companies ratcheting back their financial projections for the coming quarters. But even in times of more robust dealmaking, December has been a below-average contributor to annual M&A spending. For instance, deals in the final month of 2007 and 2006 represented just 6% of the totals in both years.
So what does all that mean for M&A in the final month of this year? Assuming we return to a more normalized level of activity in which December accounts for about 6% of total annual spending, we’ll be looking at about $9bn worth of deals between now and year-end. Overall, that would put total spending for 2009 at just $151bn – exactly half the amount that we saw in 2008.
A month off
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Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase