THE RED-HOT mergers-and-acquisitions market continued last year, with financiers wrestling over desirable M&A opportunities in contested transactions and lawyers fighting behind-the-scenes battles to help make winning bids.
So-called contested mergers, where more than one individual investor or group vies for the same target company, were both the effect of abundant private equity and a major cause of the mounting deal activity. The re-emergence of tender-offer deals, which happens when an entity tries to acquire another company by directly offering to buy stock from a target’s shareholders, is expected to boost future M&A deal-making, lawyers say.
