Merger Mania: Boom Times Ahead?

Is this an era of good feeling in mergers and acquisitions?

Time for a break-up or spin-off?

Every other day in the financial media, a deal announcement soars through the headlines.  Dell's founder, Michael Dell, wants to buy back his company, but others bid for the same and "put the company in play" (sort of). US Airways and American Airlines agree to a blockbuster combination that lifts one of the companies out of bankruptcy. Warren Buffett and his Berkshire team decide to purchase Heinz for $23 billion, reinforcing the long-time notion that Buffett has the uncanny knack for extracting value from even the most mature food-products industries.  Sprint Nextel has its eyes on Clearwire. 

In the past week, an aggressive activist investor wants to shake up Sony Corp. and spin out its entertainment division, the unit that includes movies and music labels. Dan Loeb, using his Third Point investment-fund vehicle, prepares to take on the entrenched customs of the Japan financial system, which has always been a guardian of the country's ancient corporate practices and traditions.

Loeb argues that the market is under-valuing the entertainment division because profit margins are not as high as they could be and because performance will improve if its management group "focuses" sufficiently on operations. His argument and his finance logic are not unorthodox.  The daring boldness of his approach toward board members in their country is.

Yahoo, always scrambling to remain relevant and stay on the same stages as Google and Facebook, decides to toss $1.1 billion in the way of Tumblr and acquire it.

Have we wandered back into an era of big deals and industry-shaking merger transactions?  Are the times ripe for companies to stop hoarding billions in cash and start doing something productive with it?  Will we revisit the days of the explosion of deals in the late 1980s or the bubble bursts of the mid-2000s? Will transactions in recent months spur other companies, bankers and investors to do even more?

For a year or two after the financial crisis, companies recovered and conducted business, but they held onto cash generated from operations.  Misers, more or less, they were, in a word, scared. They hesitated to reinvest in new businesses and expansion. They worried about the coming of yet another crisis. They stuffed cash into safe, low-yielding assets because they worried they might not be able to tap debt markets to borrow, even if they could borrow at absurdly low rates. (Apple's billion-dollar stash in 2012 was the stuff of headlines and editorials--until this year when shareholders started pleading with the company to do something with it.)

Companies sat on the financial sidelines--not sure what was looming ahead, not sure of the impact of Washington political winds, not sure when the recovery would ever resume. With stock markets crumbling and volatile and with nobody able to project an economic turnaround, companies weren't eager to make acquisitions, do deals or do much of anything--except wait it out. 

As markets have recovered and business confidence has surfaced, companies with mountains of cash are deciding they must do something. They have begun to feel the pain of purchasing U.S. Treasury securities that accrue virtually no return. With equity markets on a roll--at least in early, 2013--companies can comfortably elect to do cash or stock acquisitions in the way they couldn't rationalize a few years ago. 

But does that explain recently announced big deals?


Statistics actually show merger activity in 2013 running at about the same rate as last year--in number of transactions in the U.S., around the global, in fees generated, and in the aggregate value of deals. Hence, the industry and market celebrate the fact that spikes of last year are not necessarily spikes, but perhaps signs of a new trend.

Through April, according to Factsheet, there have been about 10,000 announced corporate mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, or buy-outs involving U.S. companies over the past 12 months, slightly less than in the previous 12-month period.  The aggregate value of transactions is slightly higher. Certain industries have experienced more significant growth the past year:  broadcasting, real estate, computer hardware and retailing. 

The leading banks in advising companies tend to be the familiar crew of top investment banks:  JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Barclays and Citi. Despite having withdrawn from much of investment banking, UBS is still booking remnant merger business.

Over the past few years, a couple of boutique banks, Evercore and Centerview Partners, have slipped through the back door to join this elite club. Evercore nudged its way in 2012-13 with key roles in deals involving Dell, Kraft Foods, and Ally Financial. It ranked 10th among global banks in the aggregate value of deals done in the first quarter, 2013, according to the Financial Times.


The stir around Sony will be intriguing to watch. Gather and get a front-row seat.  You have an irascible investor who likes to get his way and who has a sound track record. He bursts into Sony's offices in Japan to demand that the board respond to his request to spin out the entertainment group. (This week, the board agreed to ponder his demands.)

This kind of corporate jockeying and board-room maneuvering is nothing new in the U.S., but Loeb and Third Point are taking on a different culture, a country not accustomed to takeover tactics or threats from billion-dollar investment funds based in the U.S. However, these are better times even in Japan. Its economy has escaped doldrums under its new prime minister Shinzo Abe, who has taken the right steps to give it a swift kick. Japanese companies and investors might be open to Loeb's ideas--especially if they result in improved returns for all shareholders and two stronger companies.

Yahoo will be watched, if only to see if it can finally get one right. Yahoo is known for errant strategies and botched acquisitions and lagging behind the Internet-eyeballs race . With a new CEO (Marissa Mayer), who has injected hope, energy, and discipline into the company, the market might give it the benefit of doubt and treat the Tumblr acquisition as something that makes sense.

The deal numbers, the league tables, and merger statistics don't point to these being the best of times for merger bankers and private-equity investors. It's not 1986 or 2005 all over again.  Brisk, consistent activity, nonetheless, suggests we are far beyond the deal paralysis of the crisis, even with some large companies still paranoid and protective of some of their stashes of cash. 

The best of times? No. Better times than before? Yep.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN:  Boutique investment banks, 2009
CFN:  Today's Bulge Brackets, 2012
CFN:  Outlook, 2013
CFN:  Apple's Stash of Cash, 2012

What Will Dimon Do?

WWJD. Not what would Jamie Dimon do? But what will Jamie do?

Waiting Anxiously for the Shareholder Vote

In a matter of days, JPMorgan Chase shareholders will find out the results of a crucial vote to determine whether Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon should relinquish  his role as Chairman of the bank holding company. In a similar vote last year, 40% of shares outstanding voted for him to give up the role as Chairman.  A year later, Dimon and JPMorgan have had to digest continual impact from the billions in trading losses in the infamous "London Whale" credit-derivatives debacle. They have endured stiff criticism from regulators for how JPMorgan managed those losses and for how regulators perceived the bank was behaving in response to inquiries.

Dimon has already been penalized for "Whale" mistakes when his 2012 bonus was reduced, even as JPMorgan continued to generate extraordinary earnings last year and in 2013's first quarter. His inner circle of senior managers (operating committee members) has changed faces substantially with some departing, some nudged out, and others promoted.

(JPMorgan reported record income of $21 billion in 2012--good enough for a 15% return on equity. It earned $6.5 billion in the first quarter, 2013. By year-end 2012, the bank reported assets exceeding $2.3 trillion supported by an equity base of over $200 billion.)

Some shareholders, who have large stakes and have stepped into activist roles, want to make sure such trading losses or astounding surprises in mismanagement will never occur again. They want to reorganize board membership, juggle risk-management oversight, and put more checks in the checks-and-balances of Dimon's power over the organization.  In effect, some contend that JPMorgan-related mishaps might not have occurred if Dimon had a chairman peeking over his shoulder.

As the vote counting winds down, the question for the moment is not what should Dimon do or what would he do.  The question? What will he do if the role of Chairman is seized from him?

His storied banking resume' indicates he doesn't like playing second-fiddle. He's comfortable biding a little bit of time as he awaits a top spot, but he fidgets and fumes if the wait is prolonged. Moreover, certainly he wouldn't want to give up power, authority and influence he has had for eight years or more.

Since he has been JPMorgan's head, he has not had a formal second in command, a president waiting in a green room for him to retire.  When JPMorgan purchased Bank One ten years ago, where he had been Chairman and CEO, he agreed to be President and CEO-in-waiting.  Typical of Dimon, he itched to assume full control of the bank sooner than he was supposed to. From the moment he arrived in New York from Chicago, he aggressively pushed his agenda of expense-control and balance-sheet strengthening, while then-CEO Bill Harrison was still in office.  Back then, Dimon urged the board to make him Chairman and CEO months ahead of schedule. That was no surprise.

Before JPMorgan and Bank One, Dimon had made his mark at Citigroup. As Sandy Weill's long-time protege' when the two of them built a financial-services behemoth during the 1990s, Dimon, over time, agitated his boss, even undermined him. Eventually a power struggle and some fiery situations caused Weill to fire his favorite deputy. Dimon might have been the CEO of Citi today (and Citi might be a much different organization), if he were willing to play fair and square with Weill.  Weill had the last word, and Dimon went on to make financial history elsewhere.

What will Jamie do if he's no longer chairman of JPMorgan?

Will he remain as CEO and proceed to manage the bank in the way he has since the financial crisis--expanding in all areas, controlling costs and operations, restructuring the mortgage businesses, and hustling to keep a trillion-dollar bank under control? Will he be willing to subject his strategy, actions, and every managerial move to the second guessing of a non-executive chairman--especially when Dimon hasn't been accustomed to such in the past decade?

Or will he agree to finish out the year or two as CEO and opt to retire sooner than he expected? Will he cooperate, manage the global business, and assist in selecting a CEO successor and grooming him or her? Will he cooperate, too, if only to ensure his own shareholder stake in the bank (over hundreds of millions in ownership) is not jeopardized?

Amidst this debate of corporate governance, many have taken sides. Some have pointed to studies that show the impact of separating the two roles.  Many of the studies indicate little, if any, favorable impact on a company's revenue or earnings growth or stock price when the roles are separated.

Jeff Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at Yale's School of Management, a Consortium school, in The New York Times this week called the shareholder vote at JPMorgan a "Jamie Dimon Witch Hunt" and reminded readers that some of the most scandalous companies in the last century, including Enron and Worldcom, had separate Chairmen and CEOs.

Other experts point out the decision to separate should not be determined by previous studies, but by the particular challenge or issue that confronts the company. Case by case, they say. In the case of JPMorgan, the challenges are to (a) manage the complex risks and operations of a financial institution almost too big to fail, (b) respond to, report, and manage the escalating requirements of regulators, and (c) meanwhile, continue to grow revenues, earnings and a stock price that seems to have trouble eclipsing the $50/share threshold. Some of the proponents in the shareholder vote think JPMorgan can overcome these kinds of challenges with two people in charge.

But what happens to JPMorgan and its ability to confront these issues if one of the two is not Dimon? Is Dimon about to bolt out the door?

Here are a couple of scenarios.

1.  Shareholders vote to keep Dimon as Chairman, but the vote is close, say 51%-49%.  Dimon, therefore, won't linger or care how close it was. With a short memory, he will proceed along his recent course--cooperating with regulators, gearing up for Dodd-Frank and Basel III, reshaping his inner circle, and driving his bank leaders crazy, pushing them to increase revenues, manage all risks imaginable, and control costs.

Several recent scoldings from regulators and all the attention in the press about confrontations with lawmakers and regulatory bodies will keep Dimon focused on issues of risk, regulation and compliance.  The bank is re-engineering its organization from front to back to ensure compliance and help comfort outsiders to show Dimon has things under control in the way it seemed he didn't--momentarily--during the "Whale" crisis.

Events of the past year will encourage him to be more forthcoming with the public about his intentions for succession.  He might even quietly support the effort that his successors be a separate Chairman and CEO. In recent months, with the shuffling among those in the inner circle and by appointing people into the roles of COO, he has offered clues. But in the past, he offered hints of who were the designated favorites one year, yet changed the slate quickly a year or two later.

2.  Shareholders vote to take away Dimon's Chairman title, but permit him to remain as CEO as long as he wishes. Dimon will be wounded. However, he would be a professional, uttering the right remarks about his support for the new structure. He would also likely regroup and contemplate next steps. He would not be comfortable taking directions regarding strategy and the deployment of capital from a part-time Chairman, especially if he feels confident his sole leadership is the best course.

As an experienced professional and an investor who will not want boardroom turmoil to inflict unnecessary volatility in the stock price, Dimon won't pout and play spoilsport. However, the thrill and energy of running JPMorgan won't be the same. The power he wielded within the organization may not be the same, because the buck won't any longer stop with him.

He would likely plan a retirement over the period of a year or two. Following the footsteps of former CEOs, like GE's Jack Welch, known for being accomplished, premier business managers, Dimon will review his achievements, reflect on them, and will likely want to write about them (or teach them to a business-school finance class). He won't sit still and will pursue something bold. He'll want to advise future bank leaders on what went right, what worked, how it all worked, and what went wrong.

And it's likely then he'll insert the last word to say that separating the roles of Chairman and CEO at JPMorgan might have been something, in his case, that didn't work as well as the status quo.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN: JPMorgan and Its Trading Losses, 2012
CFN: Jamie Dimon on Regulation, 2012
CFN:  Jamie Dimon's Message to Shareholders, 2011

MBA Professors: Who's the Best?

NYU's Damodaran: Finance Pundit

Take any prominent business school, any of the schools recruiters and prospective applicants gush over. There is likely on campus a well-known, popular, favorite teacher, a campus legend who exudes business-school royalty. That professor would be the one whose course is in saturated demand and is a hot attraction.

That's the professor who has the knack for making corporate finance or economics lectures sparkle, who ignites the classroom with animated discussions of business decision-making, business strategy or financial maneuverings. She is the professor who delivers the lecture in operations research or derivative products with verve--an actress at the podium who explores a business-school case as if it were a movie script.


He would be the professor, an expert in his field, who commands in-depth knowledge in his subject, who has written tirelessly on the topic, and who is likely the industry's go-to source to explain to the public a financial trend, a theory of markets, a marketing ploy or the science of pricing goods. 

In finance, she would be the professor who transforms an intermediate accounting lecture into Broadway drama, successfully able to explain concepts of cost of capital or cost of goods sold with conviction and passion. And her students would get it.

In the world of business schools, lists abound everywhere: lists of top schools; lists of top places to study finance, marketing or non-profit management; lists of schools whose graduates have the highest starting salaries, and lists of schools most favored by recruiters.

There are now even lists of top professors.  How is it even possible to assess, rate and rank thousands of MBA professors across the country in an unbiased way? How do you assess fairly what it means to be a top professor? List-makers do it regardless, notwithstanding the subjective, whimsical nature of rankings.

Disregard for a moment the validity of rankings and lists. You might notice one name that tends to appear on many lists of top MBA professors, partly because he is indeed a highly respected professor. Or it's partly because he is popular with students, who fawn over his lectures and dive into his blog postings and writings. It's partly because they absorb his message and are stirred by it enough to jump into the dialogue. It's partly because of his masterly manner of communicating, an ability to explain finance in ways that are colorful, relevant and intriguing.

That professor would be Aswath Damarodan, a corporate finance professor at Consortium school NYU-Stern (who has likely taught dozens, if not hundreds of Consortium students over the years).  He has written several books on corporate finance, taught a generation of students at Stern, and, thanks to the the breadth and immediacy of the Internet, has blogged weekly on just about any finance topic he feels deserves his attention, insight and analysis. In a typical blog posting or essay, he explains the topic, provides analysis and shows trends, adds background, adds insight, and, as if he can't wait, offers a striking opinion. Sometimes it's an opinion that bites or hurts or certainly goes against popular discourse.

There are few finance topics he isn't afraid to address. His willingness to reach out to students (and alumni and just about anybody interested in finance), his eagerness to engage in dialogue with the public are likely a prime reason he appears on top-prof lists.

His blog postings, for sure, could be required reading for advanced students and even jaded investment bankers who might want to understand (big picture) the business they conduct (although his tone regarding investment bankers won't win fans from this crew).  His postings and explorations of ideas might help bankers and company CFOs understand whether the direction they are headed in  a deal is a path that benefits shareholders or a path that leads to financial doom.

In arguably the biggest corporate-finance headline of 2012 ("What should Apple do with its billions in cash?"), Damodaran gladly inserted his views, an analysis that would earn in buckets of fees if he were the mandated adviser.  Providing a fresh valuation of Apple shares, he conveys his blunt disappointment in Apple CEO Tim Cook: "I see Mr. Cook go from forum to forum, saying nothing of substance and wreaking havoc on the stock price almost every time he talks."

(This week, he updates his occasional analysis of the company, based on recent earnings, and he decides it is still safe to hold on to Apple stock, if you hold it. He had not yet analyzed the details of Apple's $17 billion debt offering, although he suggests accruing more debt could be a good thing at Apple.)

Damodaran has built his reputation and star power at Stern over 27 years.  He holds an MBA and Ph.D. from Consortium school UCLA.

The postings, his writings, and in-class discussions link finance theory and traditional analysis to current events, but he is not wedded to old theory.  For the most part, he tries to make sense of what's going on and then provide a passing point of view.

In early 2013, with gold markets headed for a free-fall, the professor stepped in to help students and his followers put some common sense around investing in gold. Damodaran, like many experienced investors (including guru Warren Buffet), wonders what's the big ado and fascination with gold as an investment, yet explains one or two cases where, in fact, investing in gold should be part of a balanced portfolio.

Damodaran won't hesitate to recommend the best way for a company to manage its balance sheet or shape its capital structure or the best strategy for buying back stock or paying a dividend. He didn't hesitate to declare that most large-scale acquisitions don't make sense in the long term.  Moreover, he says companies ought to do much of the deal or valuation analysis themselves and shouldn't rely too much on the conflicted advice from investment bankers.

Activist investors, such as those who have pursued an agenda with companies like Apple, JCPenney, and Herbalife, grab much of the publicity in the financial press. Some call for significant transformation in the company, whether in the board room or in production lines.  Some, well, hold companies hostage to get their agenda on the table, if only to trigger a quick short-term surge in the stock price.  Do they act against the objectives of long-term strategic investors?

Damodaran examined the question recently, weighed all sides, and decided in the end that the two groups don't act against the interests of the other.  Short-term activists, he argued, really look out for the interests of strategic investors.

Drama, flair, style and energy thrust teachers onto lists of best professors.  Damodaran, as former students would attest, has some of that, but his writings, teachings and spontaneous, well-reasoned observations about what surrounds him in the marketplace are what keeps him there.

Even the most astute MBA students in finance and those headed for cubicles at Morgan Stanley, Carlyle or Blackstone can praise his efforts to "break it all down" and tell the real story of what's going in financial markets. Consider his "Musings on Markets" a must-read for both first-year finance students and senior deal-doers.

Tracy Williams

See also:

CFN:  Most Popular Business School Professors, 2011
CFN:  Professors and the Global Imperative, 2012
CFN:  Most Satisfied MBA Alumni, 2011