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.