Deals
Takeover Fuel Begins to Flow as S&P Bull Run Makes History
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Mergers put a floor under energy stocks in 2015, they pushed biotech to records and breathed life into food makers. And yet their influence on U.S. equities is, by one measure, only beginning to be felt.
At $1.1 trillion, the value of completed takeovers in the last 12 months represents just over 4 percent of U.S. market capitalization, data compiled by Bloomberg and Credit Suisse Group AG show. That’s more than half the level in five previous bull markets -- even though the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s six-year advance just became the second-longest of the last half century.