YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephanie Cohen

lines on the record
56
first
2019-05-07
most recent
2019-05-07
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “Couple things have changed, and a couple things have amazingly stayed exactly the same, which I'll go to at the end. So, one, the velocity of M&A is just so much greater like everything. So last quarter was not even the largest quarter for M&A, and it was over a trillion dollars of M&A was done in the first quarter, right? So just the number of deals done and obviously the size of those deals has really changed the dynamics in the market. The second thing is there's been a real growth in private equity. And so that's just, if you think 20 years back, just the amount of capital in private equity. So we're at a point in time where there's $700 something billion dollars of capital just in private equity, $2 trillion in private assets. And that means private equity has $1.5 trillion of buying power. So every time there's a company to be sold, there is a potential private equity buyer, which I think fundamentally changes how people decide whether to divest businesses or if you're a private company to sell it. So when I first started,”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Think a lot of people believe that MA is a zero sum game. So people believe that I win you lose and that that's what a negotiation is like. And so that for every point there's a winner and there's a loser. And I think that's just not true, actually. I think there are ways, particularly in M&A, where what ultimately matters is what does the pro forma combined entity look like? And is that going to drive value ultimately going forward? I think there are ways to create value for both, whether that's through capital structure, whether that's through making sure that when you're marketing the story to new investors or rating agencies that you're telling the story in a way that gets the optimal outcome for the company, I think you end up creating value for the company, which ultimately allows them to provide more return to the shareholders or the people that are getting cashed out. So I think you can show up at the table and decide that it's just about winning and losing, or you could decide that we have great companies and we're going to try to figure out a way for them to have the right capital structure.”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I think people had varying views on the bailouts of the automotive manufacturers after the financial crisis. But sitting in Chrysler's headquarters on Saturdays, trying to get this deal done and seeing the people there and how hard they were working and the fact that we were able to pay off the U.S. government with a return and that the company was able to move forward and continue to produce product that people wanted and continue to employ a lot of people, I think it would change a lot of people's views.”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I worked on fiat Chrysler, which was when Chrysler paid off the U.S. government. And so that was very hard time for the world. And it was really important to the company to get out from underneath the U.S. government and to basically give them a return on their investment and to be a private enterprise and to be able to move forward. And it was a time from an economic perspective where it wasn't clear where the world was headed. It certainly was complicated because there were multiple governments actually in there, the Canadian government and the US government was there in addition to the pension having a perspective. And so the number of parties at the table in order to make those decisions was difficult. And just a little comic relief. We would get emails that said POTIS doesn't want to do that. And I don't really know what you do with that kind of negotiating strategy when you're trying to get a deal done. But it was certainly hard, but it was the most rewarding deal I've ever done.”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “MA is a way to achieve your strategy. So I think it's really important that you actually have a strategy. And so you know where you're headed. And then you know whether or not you can achieve things organically and organically and how to compare the two. And so I think people who are doing M&A well are just doing it as part of their everyday business in terms of trying to drive their strategy. And we find more and more companies actually have those two things together in the same place. The bad reasons to do M&A are the obvious, which is that you feel like your core business isn't growing. And so then you're doing M&A to make up for that. And we certainly have examples in history where people have had a hard time keeping up with the market's expectations of their own growth and then they're doing M&A to chase that rather than doing it for strategic reasons.”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The one comment on your original thesis, which is are people putting together information appropriately on the buy side and the sell side? The one thing about M&A is it's an experience-based business. So if you're an advisor, you're constantly doing M&A. By the way, with many of the same people, generally if you're a company, you're not one and done. It's quite unlikely that you're going to do one deal, whether that's a divestiture or a buy side, and then you're never going to enter the M&A market again. So I actually think people spend more time than you think doing the right thing. I understand the comments, but I actually think people spend more time. And some of that can just be selfish, which is they're no they're going to meet these people again on why to do M&A. So I'll talk a little bit actually at my currency, which is more the strategy seat, which is M&A is just a method of executing strategy. It's not the reason. And we'll talk about strategic M&A versus more financially oriented financial sponsor related M&A. But if you're a strategic buyer,”

    2019-05-07 · Invest Like the Best · Stephanie Cohen – The Evolution of M&A and Corporate Strategy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.131] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source