Corporate Finance: Challenges and Opportunities
Unrivaled and the legal directory markets most comprehensive research, the Chambers USA team discovered key trends and insights on Corporate Finance during research into the 2022 edition of the guide.
Chambers USAs view of the corporate transactional landscape
As a Research Manager in the team, I oversee our corporate transactional sections, including public and private M&A, private equity and bankruptcy and restructuring.
Research last year in the transactional legal markets showed that lawyers were working extraordinarily hard and often as 2021 came to a close, with many M&A and private equity practices telling us that they were on track to have their busiest year on record as pent up demand and large reserves of dry powder exploded on to the market.
The high demands on lawyers across the USA
I remember it being very difficult to schedule calls during the research stage of the guide, towards the end of the fourth quarter, because lawyers just had no time to squeeze in even 30 minutes however after many attempts I along with the team were able to speak to the lawyers we needed to to rank and research all submitting firms for the guide.
What's interesting is that we currently seem to be experiencing the inverse, with latest reports suggesting that global M&A is down by about 30% globally.
At the same time, bankruptcy filings remain quite low, though they are rising. That said, given that there is supposedly about $1.8 trillion in dry powder sitting in PE reserves, we don't think this downturn will last too long.
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Significant deals across the technology sector
The sector that was the favourite hunting ground for buyers and investors was the technology sector, as the shift away from retail and industrials seemed to continue.
The Twitter takeover is the most obvious, which is being led by Wilson Sonsini and Simpson Thacher, but last year we also saw huge deals for Dell who sold off a large stake to VMware and Salesforce acquiring Slack.
And, finally, the red hot SPAC fundraising and SPAC M&A seems to have cooled off, with attorneys largely telling us that investors are slowing down as they wait to see exactly what kind of scrutiny the SEC will apply.
To discover the top ranked lawyers and law firms in our SPACs legal rankings in the Chambers USA guide please click here.
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