Buying on the dips

摘要

To Get a takeover right is extraordinarily hard. The majority of deals fail: managers overpay, overestimate the savings deals will generate and often clobber their firms' balance-sheets by trying to make a great leap forward. So what to make of the deals that have taken place so far this year, against the worst economic backdrop for a generation? The surprise is that there is any activity at all. Deal volumes are down but not out. They have stabilised since the nadir of the fourth quarter of 2008 and the run rate is about 80% of the average over the past decade, according to Dealogic, a financial-analysis firm.