Warner Bros bidding war and red hot M&A market has dealmakers working through holidays

Paramount’s advisers will work over Christmas, RedBird’s Cardinale says Corporate boards more aggressive amid geopolitical uncertainties, less antitrust scrutiny Morgan Stanley sees broad-based activity across industry sectors By Dawn Kopecki and Anousha Sakoui NEW YORK, Dec 22 (Reuters) - A flurry of multi-billion-dollar deals has bankers and advisers from Wall Street to Canary Wharf packing laptops next to presents and warning family and friends their holiday vacations over the next two weeks will be cut short. There have been $463.6 billion in mergers and acquisitions announced this month, 30% more than last year, including Trump Media & Technology Group’s (DJT.O) $6 billion merger with nuclear fusion firm TAE Technologies, IBM’s (IBM.N) $11 billion purchase of data infrastructure company Confluent (CFLT.O) and a bidding war between Paramount Skydance (PSKY.O) and Netflix (NFLX.O) for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O) , according to data compiled by Dealogic. “This is the hunt and the finish, and we all enjoy it,” said Charles Ruck, a partner at Latham & Watkins, which is advising Paramount on its bid for Warner Bros. “I’m not telling anybody not to travel. I’m telling them, wherever you are, I might need some of your time.” Just this weekend, a group of private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus inked a deal to buy investment and accounting software maker Clearwater Analytics Holdings for about $8.4 billion, including debt. “It’s busy, and it’s really broad-based … we’re seeing a fair amount of activity across most of our industry sectors,” said John Collins, global head of M&A at Morgan Stanley. WARNER BROS BIDDING WAR This holiday season is shaping up to be one of the most active in recent years, according to interviews with about a dozen bankers and legal advisers. Investment bankers at Citigroup said last month was the busiest November in years. Dealmakers from New York to London and Hong Kong say they are trying to close numerous multi-billion-dollar deals before the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. As the C-suite gets more aggressive, several big companies are looking to hire advisers before the end of the year to tee up big deals in 2026. Two dealmakers in London and New York say they plan to work through the holidays, while some are optimistic that they will take off Christmas Day and, fingers crossed, Christmas Eve too. That may be more difficult for bankers, advisers and public relations professionals working on the Warner Bros deal. The bidding war keeps them close to their phones and laptops this holiday season, with some working through Christmas. On Monday, Paramount revised its $108.4 billion hostile bid, which is being jointly financed by RedBird Capital Partners, with an extended deadline of January 21. “We’re going to be working through the holidays and into the first week of January to communicate the merits of our offer to shareholders,” RedBird founder and Chief Investment Officer Gerry Cardinale said on CNBC on Monday. That is far from the only deal in town. Latham’s Ruck, who declined to discuss the Warner Bros talks, told Reuters last week the firm expected to announce at least four more deals in the next two weeks. “Our team understands it without me saying it,” he said. “They recognize that this is a magic moment, that these magic moments don’t last forever, that we are on front-page, cutting-edge deals.” This has turned out to be an extraordinary year for dealmakers after a trade war kicked off by U.S. President Donald Trump derailed activity in the second quarter. Globally, M&A activity surpassed $4.8 trillion as of last week, making it the second-best year on record after 2021, when near-zero interest rates and COVID stimulus drove M&A to over $6 trillion. DEALS PIPELINE STRONG FOR EARLY 2026 At Sullivan & Cromwell, partner Frank Aquila plans to work through the holidays. The pipeline is “very strong” for the first half of next year, which he said could rival 2021. “This will very much be a working holiday,” he said in an interview. Guillermo Baygual, global co-head of M&A at Citigroup, said his team is “extremely busy. There’s a lot happening, both in the corporate and in the sponsor world.” A lot of corporate clients are hiring advisers for “significant transactions across sectors,” he said. Added Collins: “We went through a couple years where it just felt like management teams and boards were finding reasons to say no. We have seen a real shift in philosophy towards trying to find reasons to say yes.”