A Top Goldman Banker Says It’s an ‘Extraordinary Time’ for Dealmaking

Strategic dealmaking driven by disruption across industries means 2018 will be an “extraordinary time” for M&A activity, one of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s top bankers said.

“There’s disruption in all these industries, and some more pronounced than others,” John Waldron, co-head of investment banking, said Thursday in a Bloomberg TV interview at Goldman Sachs’s Leveraged Finance Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Companies are finding that “strategic behavior is taking precedence over almost anything else,” including concerns about debt ratings, he said.