Merger activity decreased last week with four new deals announced and two active deals completed. The month of October ended with a total of 22 new deals announced and the total value of all the announced deals was $114 billion.
In a development that was apt for a week that ended in Halloween, the Tiffany deal came back from the dead. Tiffany (TIF) and LVMH modified certain terms of their initial agreement by reducing the purchase price from $135.00 to $131.50 in cash. The two companies also agreed to settle their pending litigation in the Delaware Chancery Court. When LVMH attempted to walk away from the deal in early September we decided to keep the deal active in our Merger Arbitrage Tool to see how Tiffany’s lawsuit against LVMH would play out. Just like the new deal for Front Yard Residential (RESI) we discussed last week, the gods smiled on arbitrageurs once again with this outcome for Tiffany.
One of the four new deals announced last week was a potential deal in the works. On October 8, 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was in advanced talks to buy rival chip maker Xilinx (XLNX). This potential deal became successful on October 27, 2020 when the two companies announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement for AMD to acquire Xilinx in an all-stock transaction valued at $35 billion.
You can find all the active deals listed below in our Merger Arbitrage Tool (MAT) that automatically updates itself during market hours.
There was one new deal announced in the Deals in the Works section last week.