The impact of higher interest rates than we've seen for 15
years, as well as geopolitical factors has led to fewer
transactions and intense competition for those acquisitions. While
the market expectation is that interest rates will decrease in
2024, and M&A volumes increase, it is not clear when that will
happen. Meanwhile, intense competition between bidders has led to a
sharp focus on certainty of funding to ensure that the bid is as
robust as possible.
Higher interest rates, and the increased cost of debt, will have
an impact on corporates' financing considerations and may
constrain the amount of debt that they are willing to take on.
While cashflow concerns are much less of an issue than they would
be in the leveraged finance space, and corporates will not
generally be concerned about their ability to pay the increased
coupon, they may be reluctant to burden themselves with higher
coupon debt, given other market uncertainties and a lack of clarity
as to when
