The Covid pandemic had an immediate impact on M&A activity in terms of volume and numbers. Despite a sharp downturn, the global M&A activity is rebounding and neither the prophesized expected breakdown nor overwhelming fire sale auctions in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic occurred. Indeed, some of the hopes of cherry pickers crumbled and the reality looks very different: „The hope– not by us in the M&A team, but by the board members – was that some bargains would come on to the market and that we could help ourselves at a nice price. … Good business models that were interesting for us were still good prior to and after Corona.” – as a Head of Corpoate Development summerizes the situation.
Expectations are that all activities along the M&A process will return to a pre-Corona mode once the pandemic turns into an endemic – except for one: the target screening.
The authors particularly investigate how the M&A behavior is affected by the COVID-19 crisis and formulate keytakeaways for M&A managers.
