As chairs of the American Bar Association’s 2024 US Public Target Deal Points Study, we would like to extend a huge thank-you to our attorney, in-house, and technical volunteers (all of whom are listed in the credits pages), who dedicated many hours of their days to bring this Study to you.
What Is the Public Target Deal Points Study?
The US Public Target Deal Points Study is a publication of the Market Trends Subcommittee of the ABA Business Law Section’s M&A Committee. It examines the prevalence of certain provisions in US public target mergers and acquisitions transactions during a specified time period. The US Public Target Deal Points Study is the preeminent study of US public M&A transactions, widely utilized by practitioners, investment bankers, corporate development teams, and other advisors.
The Study analyzes public target merger agreements for transactions that closed during calendar years 2021 (138 transactions) and 2022 (124 transactions), and between January 1, 2023, and June 30, 2023 (50 transactions).
The sample set of transactions included in the Study was created by identifying all of the merger agreements for acquisitions of public company targets filed on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (“EDGAR”) system that the Working Group could ascertain closed between January 1, 2021, and June 30, 2023, and then by refining the sample set to include transactions meeting the following criteria:
- The target company is a public company formed in the United States;
- the publicly available total deal consideration was in excess of $200 million; and
- the target company is not already majority-owned by the buyer.
In addition, for transactions that closed between January 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, the sample set was confirmed with data from the Practical Law What’s Market Public Acquisition Agreements database. The sample set excluded transactions in which the target or buyer was a real estate investment trust or business development company or was formed in a U.S. territory, and it also excluded de-SPAC transactions.
Where Is My Copy?
- All members of the M&A Committee of the Business Law Section received an email alert from the Study Chair, Charlotte May, with a link when the Study was published. If you are not currently a member of the M&A Committee, you can sign up on the M&A Committee’s homepage—it’s free for Business Law Section members.
- If you are not a member of the Business Law Section, what are you waiting for? You can sign up to join on the Section’s membership webpage.
- The Study is available from the Market Trends Subcommittee’s Deal Points Studies page on the ABA’s website. Also available at that link are the most recently published versions of the other studies published by the Market Trends Subcommittee, including the 2023 Private Target Deal Points Study, the Canadian Public and Private Target M&A Deal Points Studies, the European Private Target M&A Deal Points Study, and the Strategic Buyer/Public Target M&A Deal Points Study.
What Makes the US Public Target Deal Points Study Different?
To suit a large variety of needs, and to facilitate easy and convenient access, we have released the Study in two formats:
- Interactive Version: This is an interactive online version of the Study on Tableau, which you can access here. Volunteers at Salesforce have spent countless hours working with us to create dynamic visualizations of the data. We encourage you to click around—you can sort the data both by using the filters at the top of each page, and by clicking on any viz (or combination of vizzes). This updated Study includes a new filter for the signing year of the agreements so you can see the trends year over year.
- PDF Version Including Supplement: This is a modified PDF version of the online version of the Study, including the new supplement covering deal points related to Con Ed provisions. While many of the exciting features of the interactive Study cannot be accessed through the PDF, the document will nevertheless serve as a handy resource that can be downloaded for offline viewing and even printed. This PDF version includes all the data from public target deals closed in 2021, 2022, and the first half of 2023, and it cannot be filtered. Therefore, we encourage you to use the online version to fully understand the data and trends therein.
How Do I Get Involved?
We will soon embark on our review of the public target deals that closed in the second half of 2023. Is it worth getting involved? Absolutely! Don’t miss out—reach out to any of us if you would like to get involved!
