M&A Surge Driven by U.S. Deals Makes for Best January Since 2000

(Bloomberg) -- After a dismal December, dealmakers made a comeback in January, logging $275 billion of mergers and acquisitions globally to mark the best start to a year in almost two decades.

“M&A came back even though the markets felt choppy, and that shows how confident CEOs are,” said Susie Scher, co-head of the global financing group at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The surge was led by North American deals, with $187 billion of transactions announced during the month -- up 40 percent from 2018 -- according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Asia was next with $47 billion, an increase of about 10 percent from a year ago, while in Europe M&A volumes fell about 24 percent to $30.5 billion, the data show.

In the U.S., Bristol-Myers Squibb’s purchase of Celgene Corp. alone, valued at $89 billion including debt, made sure December’s $52 billion total was surpassed on the third day of the year.

$80 Billion Bonds

You’d have to go back all the way to 2000 to find more M&A announced in the first 31 days of the year globally. That’s when the biggest deal on record -- Time Warner Inc.’s merger with America Online Inc. for $186 billion including debt -- catapulted the monthly total to almost $410 billion.

Goldman’s Scher is expecting a solid year for M&A as investment grade financing markets -- where blue-chip companies such as Bristol-Myers raise debt for funding acquisitions -- recovered from a downbeat December and debt investors show a greater willingness to lend to riskier companies.

“Could you see $70 to $80 billion of bonds sold globally for an investment-grade deal? Absolutely,” she said. “In the high-yield market there’s capacity for $20-billion deals globally across bonds and loans.”

That would top last year’s biggest deals. The largest bond sale in the investment-grade market in 2018 came from CVS Health Corp., which issued $40 billion of debt in March to help finance its takeover of Aetna Inc. Blackstone Group LP’s sale of $13.5 billion in bonds and loans to fund its acquisition of Thomson Reuters Corp.’s financial-and-risk operations was the largest leveraged buyout of the year.

On top of easily available financing -- for now -- said Scher, some companies also have extra cash on their balance sheets after U.S. tax cuts last year. While some of the funds have already been pledged for buybacks, there’s still plenty to deploy on potential M&A.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net;Michael Hytha in San Francisco at mhytha@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Matthew Monks

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