The M&A Boom Times Are Set to Continue in 2022
Companies have plenty of financial firepower and want to take greater control of their supply chains.
The pandemic’s fits and starts had most people wishing good riddance to 2021. But for bankers it was a blockbuster year for mergers and acquisitions, and they’d love to repeat it.
U.S. companies were involved in $2.5 trillion worth of takeovers in 2021, handily surpassing the previous record of $1.96 trillion set in 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Unlike previous deal booms, which have been fueled by a handful of megasize transactions, this one was remarkably broad-based. There wasn’t a single U.S. acquisition larger than $50 billion in 2021, but there were more than 20,000 deals, according to Bloomberg’s count, about two-thirds more than in 2015. Dealmaking smashed records in many sectors, including industrials, consumer goods, and technology.