Semantic satiation is the technical term for what happens when a word or phrase loses its meaning from overuse. In the world of M&A, takeover targets shout “undervalued” in response to unwelcome acquisition offers so often that it’s easy for suitors and shareholders to tune it out. Beacon Roofing Supply’s $11 billion sale provides a perfect example of why it happens. CEOs and their advisers would be better served by choosing their words more carefully. QXO is effectively a shell company helmed by dealmaker Brad Jacobs that aims to roll up a building-products behemoth with $50 billion of sales, starting with Beacon.

Google’s yellow-brick road might be a path to nowhere. The search giant on Tuesday agreed to buy cybersecurity platform Wiz for $32 billion. It may help boss Sundar Pichai in his battle for the cloud, but the journey is riddled with potholes. Parent Alphabet is paying in cash to buy the startup backed by Blackstone, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. It was a hard-fought agreement. Back in the middle of last year, the technology goliath offered $23 billion for Wiz, according to the Wall Street Journal, which would already have made it Google’s largest acquisition. Talks collapsed in part over concerns that

The TikTok ban-or-sell drama is an algorithm stuck in a loop. First U.S. President Donald Trump, then his successor Joe Biden, pushed to ban the social media app amid warnings that its ties to China pose a national security threat. Both pulled back from the brink, even if a law mandating its sale or shutdown remains on the books. Now, with Trump back in charge, a long list of mooted, familiar buyers is re-emerging. The simplest way to scroll past this glitch in the feed is to spin TikTok off. Trump has given Chinese parent ByteDance a reprieve to figure

Getty Images’ $3.7 billion merger, including debt, with rival stock image seller Shutterstock is a picture-perfect template for more deals. Three big factors – potentially looser competition policing, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the benefits of combining aging tech stragglers – argue in favor of tie-ups. Key, though, is whether investors give buyers a long enough leash to strike acquisitions. Given the warm reception to the Tuesday announcement, which touts hefty savings, the scene is set. The outgoing administration of President Joe Biden was a nightmare for dealmakers. For four years, trustbusters opposed a host of combinations on novel legal grounds, slow-rolling approvals

Cartoonist Rube Goldberg designed fantastical machines to complete simple tasks through tortuously convoluted mechanisms. Buyout shop Sycamore Partners might take his contraptions as a model, judging by a Wall Street Journal report that it’s in talks to acquire Walgreens Boots Alliance. The struggling $8 bln drugstore is buried under a $36 billion morass of debt, leases and legal costs. Yet a carefully orchestrated clean-up might extract a salvageable asset. The idea is straightforward enough. Set aside the complications and focus on Walgreens’ net debt of $6.4 billion. On that basis, before deal news broke on Tuesday, it traded at under 4 times

Buying chocolatier Hershey looks like a nutty idea. Mondelez International, the maker of Oreo cookies and Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, may nonetheless give it a shot some eight years after a previous bid failed. Crunching the numbers leaves a bitter taste. There is strategic logic to the approach, which Bloomberg reported on Monday. Rival confectioner Mars is poised to get bigger following its agreed $36 billion acquisition, including debt, of salty-snacks seller Kellanova. Moreover, anti-obesity drugs present a long-term threat to the consumption of unhealthy food, while the high price of cocoa and other supplies is pressuring the bottom line. Hershey’s gross margin

If you sup’ with the devil, you should have a long spoon. Investors in Liberty Broadband have re-learned the old adage, after it struck a roughly $13 billion sale to cable company Charter Communications on Wednesday. Both are outposts of the empire of John Malone, the “cable cowboy” famed for byzantine dealmaking. The agreement squeezes investors out of a tight spot – but charges for the privilege. Liberty is less a company than a rounding error in that empire. It owns 45.6 million shares of Charter, about a quarter of the $57 billion cable provider, where it appoints three directors. That’s a bonus

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel is getting a little too fancy with his deal moves. His entertainment company Endeavor has agreed to sell some assets associated with live events to sister firm TKO. Strategically it makes some sense, but investors are throwing tomatoes for good reason. Endeavor announced on Thursday it planned to offload Professional Bull Riders, On Location, and IMG to the parent of World Wrestling Entertainment and Ultimate Fighting Championship for $3.3 billion in an all-stock transaction. The deal will boost Endeavor’s stake in TKO from 53% to 59%, further entrenching the two companies run by Emanuel. Stuffing a franchise, live

Qualcomm is humming. The semiconductor company’s market value has risen 50% this year to around $190 billion, and the wireless company’s businesses should generate $11 billion of excess cash for its fiscal year, which ends in September. Now it’s mulling buying part, or even the whole, of Intel. Intel’s size and the scope of its problems make it a tempting target for an ambitious buyer, and a deal may offer some protection from big challenges, such as a showdown with Apple. But even mulling such a risky deal shows Qualcomm’s weaknesses. Qualcomm’s main division designs chips for handsets, cars, and other devices, which

The cable cowboy is cleaning up the ranch. John Malone, renowned for his bewilderingly complex financial engineering, has embraced an uncharacteristically simple solution for one struggling part of his empire. The mess at Liberty Broadband would be partly tidied up by a mooted merger with internet provider Charter Communications. Even better for the media mogul, he gets to leave the rest of the dirty job to someone else. Liberty Broadband is a mere shell, but one structured with three classes of stock and a slug of preferred shares. It owns a 26% stake in Charter, a 16.5% piece of shriveling

Squeezing money-losing but fast-growing software companies for profit is an ideal private equity pitch. Problem is, banks shy from offering return-boosting debt when profit isn’t involved. As Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone close in on one of the year’s largest buyouts, they will likely tap private lenders for loans based on revenue, rather than cash flow. That’s bitten Vista before. This time, though, there are reassuring signs. Vista and Blackstone are discussing a $56-per-share offer for Smartsheet, a developer of collaboration software, Reuters reported on Monday. At nearly $8 billion in equity value, it would be the year’s largest U.S. private equity

Insufficient heat can interrupt the welding process, but U.S. Steel’s problem has been too much of it. Fiery nationalistic and labor backlash is preventing the 123-year-old company from fusing with Japanese peer Nippon Steel, as leery U.S. security regulators look set to nix the $15 billion deal. Although boss David Burritt may be forced to mold his metal-maker differently, there are ways to keep it relatively strong. The fight over U.S. Steel offers a microcosm of an industry-wide one. More carbon-intensive blast furnaces produce steel of better quality. And even though, say, the smooth surfaces of car panels are tougher