More deals for liquidity
Happy Friday! I hope everyone has fun plans for the long weekend. Tomorrow we are going to our house in upstate New York for a few days to ski with our older kids and family friends. I will try to fully embrace the snow and overall frosty temperatures after successfully hiding out most of the winter indoors. A season doesn't go by without someone, even family, reminding me that I am from Russia and, therefore, should be okay with winter. Yet, every winter I consider moving someplace warm, like Miami, and being from Russia probably contributed to it.
In terms of TMT M&A news, this week was rather quiet (aside from all the TikTok ban saga that can turn into M&A).
On Monday, Clearwater Analytics announced $1.5 billion acquisition of hedge fund software provider Enfusion, closing the loop on my reporting from September on Enfusion exploring a sale.
The deal fits into a broader trend of software companies that went public in the Covid-19 pandemic, but failed to maintain their stock performance after an initial boom. Clearwater Analytics, on the other hand, is a company that IPO'd during Covid, and has grown to become a strategic acquirer.
A deal for Enfusion provided liquidity to some of its early shareholders, and we should continue to see more deals that fit into that trend, people familiar told me.
Other TMT M&A news:
Security company SailPoint on Friday made public its paperwork for an initial public offering in the United States.
Ebullient equity markets, falling interest rates and hopes of a friendlier market environment for deals under the incoming Trump administration has rejuvenated the U.S. IPO market.
SailPoint will list its shares on the Nasdaq Global market under the ticker symbol "SAIL".
Wall Street bankers are already upbeat about a revival in mergers and acquisitions this year that will buoy broader investment banking activity.
It may take some time for deals to materialize, but buyouts including bank deals could gain momentum in the second half of 2025.
"You have four banks that have over a trillion dollars in assets. I think there's an expectation that the regulators would welcome at least another one or two in that stratosphere, so that we've got an environment where we have more competition," said Avinash Mehrotra, co-head of M&A Americas, Goldman Sachs.
The court's 9-0 decision throws the social media platform - and its 170 million American users - into limbo, and its fate in the hands of Donald Trump, who has vowed to rescue TikTok after returning to the presidency on Monday.
ByteDance has done little to divest of TikTok by the Sunday deadline set under the law. But the app's shutdown might be brief. Trump, who in 2020 had tried to ban TikTok, has said he plans to take action to save the app.
"My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!" Trump said in a social media post.
Businessman Frank McCourt is "open-minded" to keeping TikTok's existing investors, including the founder, involved after any deal to buy the U.S. operations of the Chinese-owned short-form video app, the U.S. billionaire told Reuters on Thursday.
McCourt said in an interview his consortium has made a formal offer to buy TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, confirming reports that it values the app without its algorithm at around $20 billion.
What else is going on? For any anonymous deal tips you can find me on Signal (@MilanaVinn.01) and Telegram (@milanavinn). I am also available by email [email protected] and via cell.
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Have a great weekend!
Milana