, Columnist
Software M&A Flared Then Lost Its Spark
A reversal in share prices cooled interest among buyers and sellers.
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The surprise result of the U.S. presidential election injected uncertainty into the short-term appetite for corporate merger activity. But even before the ballots were counted, software dealmaking was already on hiatus.
The summer and early fall of 2016 brought a crazy splurge of announced takeovers for U.S. software companies. Within a couple months, Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. each struck the biggest acquisitions in the companies' histories. Relative newcomers to software dealmaking, private equity firms, started to do oddball buyouts in the sector.