M&A Banking Expert Interview - Cross Border vs. Domestic Deals
- 02:35
M&A Banking Expert Interview - Cross Border vs Domestic Deals
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Cross-border M and A is fantastic. They're really, really exciting. They tend to be on a much larger scale. They tend to generate a lot more interest. Senior bankers want the best internal teams for them. Clients want the best banking teams for them. So if you are run a cross-border deal, you are automatically, you're doing something right. Very often, these are the deals that end up in the press a lot more, that the media want to talk about a lot more. On the flip side, of course, it's a lot more challenging than a sort of vanilla domestic transaction for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, there are regulatory issues to contend with. For example, I worked on a transaction where we had a UK company selling a US asset, and we had to comply with both the UK rules and US regulatory rules. It's not difficult, but it's cumbersome. And yes, you have lawyers to ensure that everything's done properly, but it just adds a layer of complexity. On top of that, we have macroeconomic risks. You know, we may have a situation where interest rates, for example, rise in one country, which may lead to currency fluctuations. So for example, let's say, we're in a situation where a UK company is buying a US company and for whatever reason, UK currency sterling suddenly falls quite dramatically. Well, overnight, that US asset is a lot more expensive. Does that still deliver the best value for shareholders? We don't know. It just adds a lot more complexity. Then you have government intervention. Governments tend to get involved with cross-border deals, particularly in more regulated environments, for example, healthcare, defense, banking, and this adds a lot of time to the process. And whenever you have more time added into a process, whenever you have more people involved with the process, unfortunately, it just leads to a higher risk of leaks. And by leaks, I mean the media sort of cottoning on that there's this transaction in the works, or a competitor learning that there's a potential transaction in the works. And the minute a transaction leaks, that really messes up the price, that really messes up many, many things. It may mean that the transaction has to be shelved for some time, or it could mean that the transaction just has to go ahead because the regulators decide that it has to go ahead, which may not always lead to the best outcome for shareholders. So these are all the things we need to think about when we look at cross-border M and A transactions.