[Ali Alsudairi]

From your perspective, how will Omicron Impact M&A?

[Osamah Bukhari]

In my opinion the impact is currently limited, with businesses cautiously monitoring the developments.

[Peggie Chan]

Our biggest challenge is the negative impact on travel. Normally we spend a great deal of time in person with the acquired firm team members and our Workstreams. It’s critical to build strong relationships based on trust as early as possible. We’ve all seen how much can be accomplished virtually throughout the entire COVID situation, but Omicron is adding additional stress to an already stressful situation for an acquired firm. Cheers

[Ahmed Alhumaid]

I think that COVID have made things hard to particular business sectors, but in terms of how it impacted M&A I think that it made it harder for investors to evaluate companies.

[Karine Blais]

Hi,

Here is an interesting article related to COVID-19: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/covid-impact-global-mergers-and-acquisitions

[Greg Jessup]

I agree with the travel impact. Personal interaction is critical to forming relationships and trust through the integration process. HR onboarding, leadership meetings, and IT trainings done remotely do not have the same impact when done in person. Its a disadvantage for sure.

[Ryan Wright]

Pandemic risk is certainly higher in companies risk registries as they look at mergers and acquisitions, but at the end of the day, everyone’s just looking for a good deal. So the biggest impact I see is potentially more virtual due diligence than was previously carried out before moving into site visits, employee interviews, etc.

[Tracei McLeod]

In my opinion Omicron will have no impact on M&A, two years into Covid we learned to build and establish relationships virtual and close deals during lock down. in the US M&A blew past the US$2 trillion mark in 2021, ending the year more than 30 percent above the previous record set in 2015. US deal value reached US$2.6 trillion, twice the value of 2020, and volume set a new record at 7,896 transactions.

[Po Huang]

Depending on the business you are in, it might be a good opportunity for M&A to purchase a valuable company at a discount if their market is negatively impacted by Omicron and in a need of financial support. For example, energy industry was negatively impacted in 2020 and lots of energy companies were losing money significantly. There were some consolidation happening in which big company acquired small one for consolidation.

[Claire Lee]

Bigger companies could leverage on Omicron and acquire smaller entities which may be impacted in the short run.

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