COVID-19 has created unparalleled uncertainty for nearly all businesses since companies are unable to predict when and how businesses and consumers will resume buying their goods and services. This unpredictability has made it more difficult for dealmakers to use historical earnings to predict a company’s future earnings, and accordingly their valuation, which has severely curtailed the number of M&A transactions at the present time. Yet somehow, a trickle of deals are getting done, and others are being pursued, although at a much slower pace than in 2019. This Legal Update will discuss how the new environment has caused a shift from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market in the space of a few months and has changed elements of the M&A deal process and due diligence. It also discusses different ways deals can be structured to allocate the risks between buyers and sellers in a post-COVID world, and changes in the ways transactions will be financed.
Please see full publication below for more information.