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<\/a><\/p>\nAs the pandemic shut down cities in the first quarter, companies around the world scrambled to move their businesses online and organize newly remote workforces while plugging holes in their supply chains.<\/p>\n
The chaos left chief executive officers too busy to make acquisitions, and dealmaking got off to the slowest start since 2013.<\/p>\n
Instead of opportunistic mergers, most of the deals that were struck helped companies stay afloat, particularly the travel, hospitality and entertainment businesses hit hard by lockdowns.<\/p>\n
Airlines sought federal aid while others secured private equity investment.<\/p>\n
The situation started to stabilize as companies realized they could operate in the new environment, said Scott Barshay, chair of the corporate department at law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, you could see a real shift in thinking to what will the world look like post-pandemic, and how do we put ourselves in the best position to succeed post-pandemic?\u201d Barshay said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed to be coming from companies in all sectors all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
That renewed desire to do deals converged with the lead-up to the US election, as companies rushed out announcements to avoid market volatility around the contentious vote.<\/p>\n Joe Biden\u2019s victory – combined with a divided Congress unlikely to push through major tax changes — was seen as a stable outcome. Paired with positive vaccine news, that set the foundation for the M&A floodgates to open.<\/p>\n More than $1.3 trillion of deals have been announced in the fourth quarter alone.<\/p>\n S&P Global Inc\u2019s all-stock $39 billion acquisition of IHS Markit Ltd came on the heels of technology megadeals including chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc\u2019s $35 billion purchase of Xilinx Inc and Salesforce.com Inc\u2019s agreement to buy Slack Technologies Inc. for $27.7 billion including debt.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople became more optimistic and confident,\u201d Stephan Feldgoise, global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, said in an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those who didn\u2019t want to use stock in a transaction, they were able to get commitments and liquidity from the banks, enabling them to also do cash deals.\u201d<\/p>\n Goldman Sachs was the busiest adviser this year, working on $814.5 billion of transactions, followed by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n