Researching… M&A

M&A Specifics

Capital IQ is an ideal starting point for researching M&A, providing access not just to detailed company financials, but also deal specifics for 1000’s of deals globally back to the 1980s. For that reason alone, we would recommend Capital IQ as your starting point for this kind of research.

For deals involving listed companies, the easiest way in is via the ‘Company Overview’ for that firm, pictured below. Choose ‘Transactions’ from the bottom of the left hand menu then ‘M&A/Private Placements’.

To search for deals by criteria, use ‘Screening’ and choose options from ‘M&A transactions’, accessible from the navigation menu at the top of the screen. Select ‘Screening ‘ > ‘Transactions’ > ‘M&A’ from the criteria options to build your search.

Bloomberg also has its own M&A Dashboard where you can search by specifics or simply browse deals by criteria. Access this page using Bloomberg code <MA>. Please contact MIRC for access information.

Background information

Once you have worked your way through the data available in Capital IQ and Bloomberg, SOM Library has a variety of other resources that will also be valuable in your research. These include:

• Background information such as company and industry profiles and reports from sources like FitchConnect, IBISWorld and Factiva.

• Stock market data including share prices and indices are available from both Bloomberg and Workspace. Bloomberg’s charting function is fantastic so please ask if you need help creating any graphs.

• Brokers and analysts’ reports are essential reading from the point where a deal was rumoured until well after the completion date. What else was happening at that time? Was there interest from other companies? Capital IQ is our best source for these. Bloomberg also contains some analysts’ reports. Please contact SOM Library staff for further information.

• The national press will also be a valuable source of information. Check out Factiva for coverage in newspapers worldwide.

• SDC Platinum (available via Workspace) contains the most comprehensive deals dataset available with data back to the 1950s. It is a resource which is more suited to large scale ‘number-crunching’ and therefore more suitable for gathering data for a thesis or research purposes.

As ever, any questions, please pop in or contact us here!

Feature image from Pixabay. Available at: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/11/26/07/47/hands-1063442_960_720.jpg.