Merger activity decreased last week with four new deals announced and eight deals completed.
There was a significant drop in SPAC activity last week with only two new SPAC IPOs filed and four SPAC business combinations announced.
We added Brookfield Property Partners (BPY) as a potential deal on January 4, 2021, when Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) offered to acquire BPY for $16.50 for each unit, at a premium of about 14%. On April 1, 2021, Brookfield Property Partners accepted the offer after Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) enhanced its offer price by 10% to acquire the company for $18.17 in cash or 0.3979 of a Brookfield class A limited voting share, or 0.7268 of a BPY preferred unit with a liquidation preference of $25.00 per unit.
Brookfield Property Partners has $77 billion in assets split between office properties ($32.3 billion), retail properties ($32.9 billion) and the rest in fund investments. The company become one of the largest operator of malls after it acquired Chicago-based mall operator GGP in 2018. I ended up with a position in Brookfield Property Partners in my portfolio as a result of that acquisition.
The February 2020 FT article titled Brookfield: inside the $500bn secretive investment firm provides a good overview of BAM and its structure.