Hot off shepherding cloud-security firm Wiz’s record-breaking sale to Google, Fenwick’s Michael Brown talked with Bloomberg about the long-awaited resurgence of tech M&A activity this year.
While the article addresses political factors widely expected to affect M&A, Brown offers a unique additional insight, explaining how buyers are reconfiguring their expectations now that a recovering IPO market is giving sellers mounting leverage to go public rather than taking a deal.
“It shifts the dynamics in the leverage,” Brown told Bloomberg, adding that years of depressed M&A activity means now “buyers have enough cash to spend.”
So far this year, 11 startup sales over $1 billion have been announced—totaling $54.5 billion and far surpassing previous records for comparable quarterly totals, Bloomberg noted. Wiz’s $32 billion, all-cash sale to Google—the largest-ever of its kind—accounts for more than half of that aggregate.
Among those 11 deals, Bloomberg also notes Niantic’s pending, Fenwick-led, $3.5 billion acquisition by Scopely and PIF.