Event Driven Input – Entertainment And Media Industry Set For M&A Boom

By Paul Bernstein of Venable LLP   One of the oddities of 2020 is that a great many people in the entertainment and media industries became familiar with a complex form of securities offering: the SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company). Despite having the word “Company” in their name, SPACs are not really companies. Rather, they are piles of […] Read more »

Fund of Hedge Funds Consolidation Infographic

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Consolidation has provided some managers with the m eans to grow their firm at a time when the wider fund of hedge funds industry has contracted both in terms of AUM and number of participants. The majority (60%) of investors active in hedge funds seek exposure to the asset class via multi-manager vehicles, either solely or as part of a […] Read more »

Euro Leveraged Loans Growing Especially Via SMAs

By Alastair Sewell, Manuel Arrive, and Brian Knudsen of Fitch Ratings   Summary Strong Growth, Low Base: Fitch Ratings estimates that open-ended Europe-domiciled loan funds have had strong average annual growth of 50%-60% over the last five years. However, this comes from a low base: Fitch estimates total assets of just EUR40bn across all European open-ended funds at end-June 2016, with […] Read more »

Best Practice for Activists Dealing with the CEO

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By Marshall Sonenshine, Chairman and Managing Partner at Sonenshine Partners.   1. Market Forces: Advising the CEO in an Era of Shifting Understandings of Leadership We deal makers represent and counsel CEOs, who are generally unusually talented and demanding people from whom in turn much is demanded. We do this in markets that are often […] Read more »

Hedge Fund M&A … Deals Are Flowing

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By Madison Street Capital 2016 is gearing up to be one of the most active years in terms of M&A activity for the hedge fund industry. Propelled by the wave of transactions in the fourth quarter of 2015, many positive factors are leading indicators that M&A deal momentum will continue, positioning 2016 to be a […] Read more »

A Buyers’ Market in Energy M&A?

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From Merrill Corporation/DataSite.com   Introduction The oil and gas sector has been a significant contributor to global M&A activity in 2015, despite a more than 60 percent decline in crude oil prices. Both strategic and financial buyers have been active in pursuing mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Oil and gas was the third most active sector […] Read more »

Maturing US Corporate Credit Cycle Calls For Active Credit Managers

By David Absolon, Investment Director at Heartwood Investment Management   Diverging from recent trends, the US investment grade corporate market has underperformed US treasuries year-to-date. The yield spread (the difference in interest rates between the Investment grade corporate bond and the equivalent maturity risk-free rate) is at the widest level for a year and has […] Read more »

Visium On Activism

A Q&A With Frank Gallagher and Peter Drippé, Portfolio Managers at Visium Funds     Q1: How important is shareholder activism as a key driver of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in 2015? We believe that shareholder activism activity will continue to grow in 2015. Recently we have seen more and significantly larger companies targeted […] Read more »