The recent phenomenon of private equity firms cooperating on large acquisitions continues this month with Maytag’s recent announcement that it will be taken private by an investment group led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC in a deal valued at $1.13 billion. Ripplewood and fellow investors...

M&A activity has shown no sign of retreating from the strong deal market that began in 2004. In the first quarter of 2005 deal activity kept up the pace set at the end of last year with $264 billion worth of deals on 1,906 transactions, compared to...

Buy-outs are back. In addition to record LBO volumes in the second half of 2004, valuations are going up. Increasingly, valuations are high enough for sellers to enter the market, without being so high as to give buyers...

Following a flurry of big deals at the end of 2004, M&A activity is off to a strong start, with over $144 billion of deal volume in the first 40 days of 2005, which Thomson Financial indicates is the fastest start since 2000. So far the mega deals of 2005 have been largely about...

Coming off of the busiest December in M&A history ($283 billion in value!), 2005 certainly looks promising. All of the trends that chilled M&A activity in 2002 and 2003 turned positive during 2004. The past year marked...