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M&A Activity is Barometer for Recovery: Bank of America Exec
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Web Producer, CNBC
With global M&A volume reaching its highest on record for the month August and $300 trillion dollars on coporate balance sheets, look for CEOs to start deploying more cash on mergers and acquistions.
"We only see M&A activity when there's a belief that we're in a recovery near the end," Jeff Kaplan, global head of M&A and corporate finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch [BAC
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], told CNBC's The Strategy Session on Friday.
"Big tech companies have the lion share of this cash," just look at the bidding war that took place between Hewlett-Packard [HPQ
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] and Dell [DELL
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]over the cloud-based storage application company 3Par [PAR
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], he said.
Ultimately, HP raised its offer to $33.00 per share, approximately $2.1 billion and Dell decided to not raise its bid. Other sectors are also seeing an increase in activity.
Take the huge cross-border battle going on with the mining company BHP Billiton [BHP
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] making a hostile all-cash offer to acquire Canada's Potash [POT
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], the world's largest fertilizer enterprise.
"CEO's and board of directors are telling us today that they have some confidence," Kaplan said, adding, "to me it's fairly broad based, its not a blip, it doesn't ensure a recovery but in our minds we think this is a barometer for recovery and that the M&A environment will continue to be good to year end."
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