While most M&A transactions start off hopeful, not all are
destined for completion. Each year, a sizable number of deals are
abandoned – and that number appears to be rising. A recent study published by the M&A Research
Centre at the University of London's Cass Business School and
enterprise data management firm Intralinks (the Study) undertakes a
broad analysis of over 78,000 M&A transactions from the past 25
years, concluding that the deal failure rate of 7.2% in 2016 was
the highest markets have seen since 1995. This number doesn't
appear to be anomalous either – the year-on-year failure rate
has been steadily increasing since a near-decade low in 2013.
Contributing factors
These statistics beg the question of what might be causing deals
to be abandoned and what firms can do in order to reduce the
chances that their transactions meet the same fate. The Study
attempts to answer this question with a data-driven approach,
narrowing in on a handful of factors which
