All I want for Christmas is M&A
After a quiet year for deals, bids are suddenly flying around like days gone by.
For dealmakers, Christmas has come early.
Today, share registry Link Group opened its arms to Japanese conglomerate MUFG, supporting a $1.2 billion takeover bid. Spectacularly, it represents the fourth potential billion-dollar deal that has bubbled up in the space of half as many weeks.
First it was Washington H. Soul Pattinson poking around Perpetual. Then Chemist Warehouse was limbering up for a run at the local bourse via a reverse merger with Sigma Healthcare. Shortly after, Woodside and Santos came clean about merger discussions after speculation became too loud to ignore.
All four prospective deals will drag into 2024, if they are to be finalised at all — and it's far from certain any of them will be. Still it’s an extraordinary turn of fortune. It has been a quiet year for M&A — one of the few truly big deals (certainly the one that sucked up the most oxygen), Brookfield’s $20 billion tilt at Origin Energy, has all but fallen over. And remember that the largest ASX float in 2023, by chemicals company Redox, raised a meagre $400 million.
Now in December the indices are lifting and M&A bids are flying around like days gone by.
