Hedge Funds Look for Hard Hats in a Year of Collapsing Mergers
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Pfizer’s failed merger with Allergan was one of several recently shut down by regulators’ concerns.CreditMichael Nagle/Bloomberg
While last year set a record for the amount of money spent on corporate mergers — $4.7 trillion — this year is so far setting a very different record: the dollar amount of deals that have come undone.
Since the beginning of January, $400 billion worth of corporate mergers have been withdrawn in the United States, almost three times the previous record for the same period, set in 2007, according to Dealogic, which analyzes such data.
On Tuesday, the retailers Staples and Office Depot called off their $6.3 billion deal. The collapse came about a week after the dismantling of the proposed $35 billion merger of the oil services companies Halliburton and Baker Hughes, and one month after the death of the drug giant Pfizer’sproposed $152 billion merger with Allergan — all canceled because regulators raised concerns…
Hedge Funds Look for Hard Hats in a Year of Collapsing Mergers
