‘Lighter’ M&A at Nuance

Posted by on November 25, 2008

Since former rivals Nuance Communications and Scansoft welded themselves together three years ago, the combined company has been shopping at a furious rate. In 2007, the speech-recognition vendor inked seven acquisitions. So far this year, it has spent some $640m on three acquisitions. (That doesn’t count an unsolicited offer for Zi Corp.) The company has [...]

Extended hours at boutiques

Posted by on November 21, 2008

Our fourth annual Tech Banking Outlook Survey shows that deals are dragging on longer than they used to. This is especially true for smaller shops. Why might this be?

Survey says …

Posted by on November 20, 2008

Against the backdrop of historic turmoil on Wall Street, we sent out our fourth annual Bankers’ Survey to clients to get their views on where their business is now and where it’s heading. The take-away: It’s all heading down. Truly, every question – from assessments of overall pipelines to forecasts for specific lines of the [...]

LBOs without the ‘L’

Posted by on November 20, 2008

In the current economy, all debt is suspect. That’s one of the main reasons we’ve seen the value of private equity-backed deals plummet by 84% to just $26bn. (For context, that’s just half the level ($56bn) we saw for all of 2005, before the buyout barons really get swinging.) And, according to senior bankers in [...]

Dealing with a legacy

Posted by on November 18, 2008

Justly or not, acquisitions go a long way toward shaping a CEO’s legacy. (If you don’t believe us, just ask Jerry Levin, who sold Time Inc for what turned out to be a pile of wampum, in the form of overinflated AOL equity.) With Monday’s announcements that two major tech CEOs are on their way [...]

Salesforce.com for sale?

Posted by on November 17, 2008

Ever since Barack Obama won the US presidential election two weeks ago, Silicon Valley has started its own little parlor game about the incoming administration. (And make no mistake, the Valley is one of the most insular places on the planet, which makes these guessing games fun for those in certain zip codes.) The specific [...]

Market imbalance

Posted by on November 14, 2008

The markets are shrinking. And we’re not just referring to the trillions of dollars of value that have been lost from the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq over the past year. Instead, we’re talking about the actual number of companies on the markets. Listings rise and fall over the years, as companies go [...]

Betting on casual gaming

Posted by on November 13, 2008

The casual gaming industry has quietly grown beyond an insignificant niche. M&A and VC interest are on the rise. What does this mean for the segment in the future?

US online job companies shop abroad

Posted by on November 11, 2008

The large online recruitment companies in the US, having found that their business models don’t always translate in other countries, are increasingly buying their way into foreign markets. In recent weeks, both Monster Worldwide and CareerBuilder.com have gone on shopping trips overseas. In October, Monster acquired the remaining 55% stake it did not already own [...]

Push-back on the markdown

Posted by on November 7, 2008

Rather than the current M&A market being a place where buyers and sellers meet on more or less equal footing, current deals clearly show that acquirers have the upper hand (if you’ll forgive the mixed anatomical metaphor). We’ve already noted how some would-be buyers have pushed for ‘recalibrations’ in deal prices and, for the most [...]

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