Tag: Wall Street crisis

Market imbalance

Brenon Daly

The markets are shrinking. And we’re not just referring to the trillions of dollars of value that have been lost from the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq over the past year. Instead, we’re talking about the actual number of companies on the markets.

Listings rise and fall over the years, as companies go public or get acquired. At least, they do in normal years. But in a year like 2008, with black swans flying across the sky, the number of listings just falls (rather like the prices of the stocks that remain on the exchanges). Already this year, we’ve seen some 62 US publicly traded companies get acquired. On the other side of the ledger, we’ve had fewer than 10 technology IPOs since January. (And don’t look for Metastorm, which filed to go public in mid-May, to debut on the Nasdaq anytime soon. The company pulled its planned offering on Thursday.)

In terms of M&A dollars, as you might guess given the state of the markets, the companies that trade on them have been sharply marked down, as well. While the number of deals has dropped 27%, the value of those deals has plummeted twice that amount (56%). In addition, spending on public company deals has declined even more than the overall tech M&A market, which has sunk about 40% in terms of dollars spent so far this year.

Acquisitions of US public companies

Period Deal volume Deal value
January 1-November 14, 2007 85 $250bn
January 1-November 14, 2008 62 $109bn

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

Push-back on the markdown

Brenon Daly

Rather than the current M&A market being a place where buyers and sellers meet on more or less equal footing, current deals clearly show that acquirers have the upper hand (if you’ll forgive the mixed anatomical metaphor). We’ve already noted how some would-be buyers have pushed for ‘recalibrations’ in deal prices and, for the most part, have gotten these discounts.

However, one target isn’t just sitting by for a markdown. I2, which agreed to be acquired by JDA Software Group in mid-August, has told its bargain-minded buyer that it plans to hold to the original terms of the deal. Under those terms, i2’s common shareholders would pocket $14.86 for each share. (There are also payments to satisfy i2 convertible holders, giving the proposed transaction an enterprise value of $346m.)

I2 shares traded close to the bid up until Wednesday, when JDA told i2 it wanted the company to delay its shareholder vote. I2 went ahead and held the meeting as scheduled Thursday, with more than 80% of shareholders voting for the deal. The company says it has done everything it needed to do to close the deal and ‘expects’ JDA to do the same. The market doesn’t share that expectation. Instead, it anticipates that JDA will trim its bid. I2 shares dropped $4 on Wednesday and sank again on Thursday, closing at $9. That’s almost 40% below the original offer price. In case anyone is curious, terms call for a breakup fee of $15m or $20m, depending on the split.