Aberdeen | Frankfurt, 15.12.2014
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, Richard Dunbar, Deputy Head of Global Strategy – Investment Solutions bei Aberdeen Asset Management, gibt einen Ausblick auf Fusionen und Übernahmen im kommenden Jahr: „Welche Sektoren könnten sich 2015 als anfällig für den Gesang der Sirenen in Form von Investmentbankern erweisen?
Herausforderungen mit Blick auf die Einnahmen könnten einige Unternehmen in der Rüstungs- und Ölindustrie zu Käufen verleiten, die Einkünfte versprechen und Kosten senken. Eventuell könnten Übernahmeaktivitäten sogar den Finanzsektor betreffen, der mehr Kapital und mit Sicherheit mehr Regulierung zu verzeichnen hat. Mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit wird es im Bereich der Sozialen Medien weiterhin zu Abschlüssen kommen, bei denen Spezialisten beurteilen müssen, ob die Preise gerechtfertigt sind oder nicht.“
Lesen Sie den gesamten Beitrag von Richard Dunbar im Original weiter unten.
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Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Sabine Knöß, aberdeen@newmark.de, +49 69 944180 50
Richard Dunbar, Deputy Head of Global Strategy – Investment Solutions
M&A: the bulls are back in town
The world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) enjoyed a frenetic burst of activity in 2014. Transactions reached $2.8 trillion in the first nine months of the year, a rise of 34% on the same period last
year and the highest volume during this period since the heady days of 2007, according to Dealogic. Healthcare, telecoms and real estate led the way, with an average deal size of $426m, $1.0bn and $241m respectively. So the poor investment bankers who have not had a Christmas for the last seven years have had a better time of things. But what is driving this and should the City’s dealmakers be ordering in more champagne for 2015?
One of the driving forces behind the rise in dealmaking is that companies are awash with cash. US firms hold almost $2trillion of the stuff. Perhaps the recent desire to hoard folding ones should not have surprised us –
the drying up of credit from banks and bond markets is still fresh in the minds of most company executives. A desire to be a little more independent of, what turned out to be, unreliable partners in the provision of capital is perhaps prudent. However, 2014 certainly saw finance directors loosening the purse strings.
There has also been real evidence of a pickup in the fortunes of the US economy, a recovery that has been a long time coming. An uncertain economic outlook will, not surprisingly, have led to more caution in boardrooms. A steadier outlook for the world’s largest economy has undoubtedly reduced the fear among executives that an economic downturn might make their M&A sprees suddenly look foolish. The US economy should continue its recovery. If this confidence takes hold, this nascent rise in boardroom confidence could well continue into 2015.
When it comes to M&A, company executives are as susceptible to the latest fad as any teenager. This often leads to an obsession with a particular sector. If one company heads off along the acquisition trail, its contemporaries often follow. And so in the revenue-challenged healthcare sector, M&A became the ‘strategie du jour’. GSK, Novartis, Pfizer, Valient and AbbVie to name but a few, all embarked on transactions which, they assured us, would be value enhancing to their shareholders. This sheep-like (or lemminglike!) trend will certainly continue in 2015.
So which sectors might prove susceptible to the siren songs of the investment bankers in 2015? Revenue challenges may tempt some in the defence and oil sectors to buy some revenue and cut some costs. Perhaps even the banking sector, as it sees more capital and regulatory certainty, may see some activity. One certainty for 2015 is that the social media sector will continue to see deals at prices that I will leave to the connoisseurs, with more vision than I in this ‘specialist’ area, to justify.
Of course as we tip toe into 2015 we should remember that we have yet to see an M&A presentation by company management that did not promise nirvana for the acquiring shareholders. But the academics, and indeed painful experience, remind us that it will be the minority that take us to this heavenly plane. My most confident forecast is that the need for caution will not feature prominently in the bullish investment banking presentations being readied for their clients’ January board meetings.
The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up and your clients may get back less than the amount invested
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