Last October I wrote an article titled “Big Game Hunters: Going After Those Juicy Merger Arbitrage Spreads” that explored the odds of success for announced mergers & acquisitions, the length of time it takes deals to close and some of the reasons deals failed.
I analyzed 2,614 deals from our database and found that 95% of all deals ended up closing with some variability between the years based on market conditions. For example only 90% of the 154 deals announced in 2020 closed, while 98% of the 206 deals announced in 2012 ended up closing. The news was not all bad during the pandemic years as four deals announced in 2020 and six deals announced in 2021 ended up with new higher offers.