After a tough start to 2020, mergers and acquisitions came back strong in the third quarter, as executives rushed to revisit deals they left on hold when the pandemic hit.
A September “deal frenzy” led to a record third quarter with more than $1 trillion worth of transactions around the world, mostly focused on coronavirus-resilient sectors such as technology and healthcare, according to Refinitiv data.
The bad news is that the Q3 upswing failed to take up the slack created by a lackluster start to 2020. M&A deals overall were down 21%, at $2.2 trillion in the first nine months of 2020, with U.S. transactions coming in at $800 billion, a 43% slump from the same period last year. Find out more.