Lawyer Monthly - October 2021 Edition

WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | OCT 2021 64 Last month, we reported that British supermarket giant Morrisons had seen its share value leap by over 60% following reports that it was at the centre of a $9.5 billion bidding war between US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and rival Fortress Investment Group. With an auction set to commence in the coming weeks, this takeover deal is still developing – as are several other high-profile mergers. In a mammoth deal for the gold industry, Canada’s Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd announced its intent to buy the share capital of rival Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd for $10.68 billion USD. If carried out, the combined miner will have a market capitalisation of around $24 billion and manage operations across North America, Europe and Asia, with a reserve base of 48 million ounces of gold. The deal comes on the back of a flurry of activity in the gold industry as it rebounds from its pandemic-induced slump. Earlier in the month, South African mining company AngloGold Ashanti agreed to purchase Canadian-listed firm Corvus Gold in a transaction worth C$570 million. Meanwhile, in the IPO field, it has become apparent that the early 2021 SPAC boom is now approaching a crawl. As the Federal Reserve has rolled back the pandemic- era stimulus that fuelled demand for SPAC mergers, S&P Global Market Intelligence found that such activity has fallen by around two-thirds from the last quarter of 2020 and brought an end to the record-breaking M&A streak seen at the beginning of the year. This is not to say that SPACs are out for good, however; Swedish electric car manufacturer Polestar announced on 27 September that it will go public by merging with a US-listed SPAC backed by billionaire Alec Gores and investment bank Guggenheim Partners. The Gores Guggenheim deal is valued at $20 billion. These major SPAC deals are expected to grow yet rarer as the year closes out. What’s Happening in theWorld of M&As and IPOs?