Merger Activity declined last week with one new merger announced and two deals closing.
We have made a change to the way we classify deals in our articles and the Merger Arbitrage Tool. We used to have four types of deals listed including,
The special conditions deals were the ones that had collars where the number of shares in a stock only deal could vary based on the closing price of the acquiring company. Our system was set up to handle two collars. Recently we came across a deal that had three collars defined in the deal and we have also come across several deals that did not fit any of the four types mentioned above. These were deals that included contingent value rights (CVRs) and other conditions. We have usually treated those types of deals as “cash only deals” and have mentioned the special circumstances of the deal in our write-ups.
Going forward, we are going to classify these types of deals (the ones with CVRs and other conditions) as “special conditions” and are going to classify deals with two collars as “collars”. Hopefully this will help make things easier for those of you that prefer to focus on cash only deals and will make the tool more useful. As always we love to hear feedback on how we can improve this product.