$10B+ Mergers & Acquisitions Deals On Record-Breaking Pace

$10B+ Mergers & Acquisitions Deals On Record-Breaking Pace by Joanna Nolasco, PitchBook

This has been an impressive past week for massive-and we mean massive-mergers & acquisitions. First, Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) completed its purchase of both Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for a total of roughly $70 billion, forming a combined broadband company serving over 25 million U.S. customers. A day later, healthcare and agriculture corporation Bayer (ETR: BAYN) confirmed its preliminary discussions to acquire Monsanto (NYSE: MON) in a proposed deal believed to be valued at upward of $42 billion.

Mergers & acquisitions deals with blockbuster price tags have seen a notable increase of late. According to the PitchBook Platform, majority transactions worth at least $10 billion have amounted to a total of $371 billion deployed worldwide across 13 deals so far in 2016. Not even five months in, this year’s total value in $10B+ M&A is already 77% of what was recorded in all of 2015—a year that had set records for this upper echelon of transaction sizes.

$10 billion+ mergers & acquisitions deals by year

Source: PitchBook Platform

With $224 billion invested across seven $10B+ M&A deals, 1Q surpassed the deal value of each quarter since 2012 while equaling the previous peak for volume. This quarter is on pace to be another torrid one for mammoth M&A deals, with six closed transactions clocking in $147 billion total.