Merger activity decreased last week with six new deals announced and four deals completed. In addition to the six new deals, there were four potential deals in the works and four new SPAC business combinations announced last week.
Google finally completed the acquisition of Fitbit last week after facing multiple hurdles. According to Reuters, the U.S. Justice Department will continue to investigate the buyout as Google still awaits approval from the Australian government. This merger had a very wide spread at various times since its announcement on November 1, 2019 and the spread crested 20% a few times as you can see from the spread history below. I felt that the regulatory hurdles the acquisition would face worldwide would make it difficult for Google to consummate this deal but they prevailed. We have seen with several deals in the last year that were perceived as risky but managed to close.
In one of the more unusual moves we have seen with mergers in the recent past, Acacia Communications (ACIA) terminated its merger agreement with Cisco Systems (CSCO) because the deal had not received approval from the Chinese government and Acacia did not have an obligation to close the merger before the arrival of the January 8, 2021 extended end date. Cisco Systems must have had its heart set on this acquisition because just 3 days after the previous all cash deal for $70/share was terminated, the two companies announced an amendment to the merger agreement where Cisco would acquire Acacia for $115 per share in cash, a whopping 64% premium to the previous deal price.
You can find all the active deals listed below in our Merger Arbitrage Tool (MAT) that automatically updates itself during market hours. There were four new deals announced in the Deals in the Works section last week.
SPAC Arbitrage
The SPAC IPO frenzy continued with 24 new IPOs filed last week and 4 new SPAC business combinations announced. You can find the new SPAC IPO announcements in our new SPACs tool here.