“Needlessy expensive and restrictive”

The Empire Center has launched “DeregulateNY,” a web-based contest inviting users to identify the most needlessly expensive and restrictive rules imposed on people offering goods and services in New York State. Contestants submit entries online and compete to win a cash prize …..and a trip to Albany. New York businesses contend with more than 300,000 regulatory restrictions that can artificially drive up costs and make it harder for new firms to enter a given industry or market. Some of these regulations were originally designed to protect public health or safety—but many also were promoted to limit competition and consumer choice, hampering new business start-ups and job creation.  DeregulateNY will take a fresh look at regulatory obstacles to commerce and free enterprise, letting businesses tell their stories while helping New Yorkers decide whether these rules and regulations are working as intended.“No one is more qualified to talk about what’s wrong with the state’s business climate than the people trying to make a living under it,” said Tim Hoefer, the Empire Center’s executive director. “By giving New Yorkers a voice, we can better understand what needs to change in our state and take steps toward that change.”Entries may be submitted through Friday, February 14, 2020. Contest winners, as decided by a panel of judges, will be announced on Thursday, February 20, 2020.………..Busy people, all of you. Our friends at Wachtell, Lipton have issued a report on M&A activity that uis worth highlighting here: “Despite ebbs and flows of global economic uncertainty, M&A activity remained robust in 2019.  Total deal volume reached $4 trillion globally, a slight decrease from the $4.1 trillion volume in 2018, but higher than the $3.5 trillion in 2017.  The U.S. M&A market had a particularly strong year.  15 of the 20 largest deals involved U.S. companies, with deals involving U.S. targets totaling over $1.8 trillion, second only to the record of over $2 trillion set in 2015.  While deals over $10 billion fell from 60 globally in 2018 to 49 in 2019, deals over $25 billion increased from 16 globally in 2018 to 21 in 2019.  These mega-deals, including Celgene’s $93 billion sale to Bristol-Myers Squibb, AbbVie’s pending $83 billion acquisition of Allergan, the pending $48 billion combination of Pfizer’s Upjohn business and Mylan, Occidental’s $55 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum and the pending $140 billion merger of United Technologies’ aerospace business with Raytheon, greatly buoyed deal activity in 2019. As in 2018, the technology sector saw the largest deal volume, followed by healthcare, real estate and finance.  Global private equity-backed buyout volume reached $400 billion in 2019, robust by historical standards but down from nearly $500 billion in 2018.  Publicly announced hostile and unsolicited M&A declined, falling from $522 billion (or 13% of overall deal volume) in 2018 to $310 billion (or less than 8% of overall deal volume) in 2019, although many companies faced non-public unsolicited overtures from private equity firms as well as strategics, requiring deft handling.

Some of the key themes that drove M&A activity in 2019 and expectations for 2020.

The tech sector continued to drive M&A in 2019, with 16% of global M&A volume and 20% of U.S. M&A volume involving a tech company as an acquiror or target.  A tech company was a transaction participant in five of each of the top 20 global deals and top 20 U.S. deals in 2019.  Some notable tech deals in 2019 included the London Stock Exchange’s $27 billion
acquisition of Refinitiv, Salesforce’s $15.7 billion acquisition of Tableau Software, Broadcom’s $10.7 billion acquisition of Symantec’s enterprise security business, eBay’s $4 billion dollar sale of StubHub to viagogo and the $21.5 billion Global Payments merger with TSYS.  We expect that tech M&A will continue to represent a significant portion of M&A activity in 2020, as companies inside and outside the sector look to expand product offerings, drive more rapid growth, defend against competitors, enhance efficiency, move up the value chain and react to innovation and disruption.Tech M&A will continue to be driven by the voracious appetites of the largest tech companies for the acquisition of new products, technologies, markets and talent through M&A, although certain of these companies are likely to face some headwinds in the form of closer scrutiny by U.S. and foreign antitrust regulators, particularly in acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors by allegedly dominant digital platforms.” There’s a lot more. See the Wachtell website.

SA