Karanovic & Partners, together with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, held a webinar dedicated to the post-COVID-19 landscape of M&A in Southeastern Europe. The webinar was held on 8 June 2020, with speakers being Senior Partners Dragan Karanović, Marko Ketler, and Rastko Petaković, who also moderated the discussion, while Natascha Doll and Sebastian Lawson spoke on behalf of Freshfields.
The main part of the webinar was centered around the discussion on the general trends in the European M&A expected to be seen in the short to medium term, including new transaction structures, the approach to external financing, and the impact of regulatory changes on transaction certainty and execution.
The current outlook for the European market looks bleak, with an expected dramatic fall in the second quarter of 2020, following a relatively active start to the year before the COVID-19 outbreak.
This marks the third year in a row that value has fallen. One of the main reasons for this is that 2016 was a particularly strong year in the region. Moreover, the past few years were historic, record-breaking ones for global deal-making. The M&A cycle has since crested and is now likely past its top.
The full repercussions of the pandemic and its effect on the M&A market are yet to be understood, but the outlook for the latter part of the year seems good so far – provided no surprise events (e.g. the second wave of COVID-19) deal another blow to the world’s economy.
