M&A Takes New Twists

Rick Merritt, EETimes
11/25/2016 00:00 AM EST

The volume of mergers and acquisitions in the last two years has far surpassed historical records. But now the quality of the deals is changing, too

For example, Macom’s bid for Applied Micro and Broadcom’s for Brocade are like private equity transactions. The buyers aim to carve up the companies, taking the profitable bits and selling off the rest.

I know this is not entirely new. The former Avago famously did this a few years back, slicing LSI into three or four pieces, most of which it sold. But to have two such deals of a fairly large size within a week is a bit breathtaking.

I suspect we’ll see more such deals in the next year. And I see what looks like two other patterns likely to be repeated.

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