Dealmakers Plan to Keep Investing in Private Equity Practices Amid Higher Expectations for 2024

In The American Lawyer, White & Case M&A partner Luke Laumann examines the ways in which "creative" dealmaking solutions could work in conjunction with traditional deals to produce an uptick in deal activity this year.

While M&A deals in 2023 were still down compared to previous years, last year, "people filled that hole…with a lot of add-ons," says Laumann. "We saw some public companies doing carve-outs, and there were willing sellers there. Some companies also did liability management (as a consequence of interest rate hikes that continued through 2023) transactions."

Laumann notes that he expects "creative" solutions to continue in 2024, and that those new solutions might work in conjunction with more traditional deals in 2024 to produce a significant uptick in deal activity.

"I think everyone has been waiting for a recession that is a year away for about seven years now," Laumann says, pointing to the difficulty investors face when assessing the deal market. "They thought 2023 would be the year. Didn't come. Inflation has gone down. Unemployment is low. There are signs that interest rates are going down. This could be the soft landing. It is certainly a feeling, separate from numbers and trends."

See the full The American Lawyer article here.

Press contact
For more information please speak to your local media contact.