Rick Climan and his all-star M and A team move to Hogan Lovells

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in Business, business advice, M&A

In this episode of The M&A Moment, I talk with Rick Climan about his recent move to Hogan Lovells, LLP. Rick, along with his entire mergers and acquisitions all-star team of Keith Flaum, Jane Ross, John Brockland and their support staff all moved to Hogan Lovells to take advantage of the firm’s worldwide reach and resources. This is a powerhouse move in the technology M&A world designed to put Rick and his team in position to be the leaders in the increasingly global nature of multi-billion dollar deals. As Rick often discusses, both domestic and foreign corporations are looking for global targets and buyers for their M&A strategy and Rick and his team are now likely to be one of the go-to firms for one side of many of the biggest deals.


Rick Climan headshot
  
Hogan Lovells, LLP logo

Rick and I also take a look back at a deal announced in 2016, Broadcom’s acquisition of Brocade Network Solutions and see how the regulatory review, both foreign and domestic, has been progressing. We also discuss some recently announced divestitures, contingent of the deal closing, to see if this might be timed to appease regulators or perhaps be for some other strategic reason.

Finally, we look and the heating up tech IPO market and see if this means the M&A exits will be impacted by the availability of more liquidity in the equity markets..

 

This episode was recorded on Bay Area Ventures on SiriusXM Channel 111 Business Radio Powered by the Wharton School on May 22, 2017.

First quarter 2017 mergers and acquisitions review

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in Business, business advice, Finance, Financial Services, M&A

The first quarter of 2017 is in the history books and in this episode of The M&A Moment, Rick Climan, a partner at Hogan Lovells, LLP and I discuss the Q1 M&A results both world-wide and for the San Francisco Bay Area.

In Bay Area technology M&A, we discuss Intel Corporation’s acquisition of Mobileye, the Israeli manufacturer of vehicle collision avoidance systems for $15 billion. This deal gives Intel a major leg up into the world of autonomous vehicles. Next we look at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s purchase of Nimble Storage for $1 billion.

Hogan Lovells, LLP logo  Rick Climan headshot

 

Then we talk about the volume of global M&A in terms of both overall dollar value and the number of deals taking place in the first quarter of 2017. We look at trends in the currency of mergers and acquisitions such as cash or stock and the preferences for each from the buyer’s or seller’s perspective as the year 2017 unfolds. We close our first quarter review with a look at what lies ahead for the rest of 2017.

Finally, we take a look at the how M&A deals initiate. We discuss the “mating dance” of M&A from the buyer’s perspective. To do so we look at why buyers pursue M&A as a strategy. We discuss the teams they put in place to implement that strategy in order to select a target company and to initiate the talks. Who makes the first overture in an M&A deal, what do managers need to think about before doing so and who is the right person in the organization to make the initial call. Listen in to learn all about it. Note, next month we’ll take a look at the process from the target company’s perspective.

This episode was recorded on Bay Area Ventures on SiriusXM Channel 111 Business Radio Powered by the Wharton School on March 27, 2017.

First look at M&A for 2017 – Cisco acquires AppDynamics and two health insurance mergers crater

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in business advice, M&A, Venture Capital

In this episode of the M&A Moment, Rick Climan of Hogan Lovells, LLP, joins me to look at how the year 2017 is starting off in the Mergers and Acquisitions arena. We discuss the dollar volume for January 2017 and how that compares to the same period in 2016. We then discuss whether or not the January figures are a good indicator of how the whole year will fare.

The year started off with a couple high flying tech companies being purchased for a fraction of their peak valuations and look at how that might portend for the so call “unicorns” – privately held companies valued over $1 billion. January was also a month where the US government blocked two very large deals that were announced in 2015. Rick talks about those deals and how the Trump administration may or may not act in similar situations going forward. We end the conversation by talking about one very large deal just announced where the target company was simultaneously pursuing an IPO and an acquisition.

Rick Climan  Hogan Lovells logo

 

All this plus Rick’s usual analysis of the legal, financial and strategic thinking behind the M&A markets and these specific deals.

This episode was recorded during my Bay Area Ventures show on SiriusXM Channel 111 Business Radio Powered by the Wharton School on February 13, 2017. Be sure to check out my Bay Area Ventures show page by clicking on the show link at the top of this page. For more information on Rick Climan you can go to Rick Climan on HoganLovells.com or go to www.MandAMoment.com.