In the 2022/2023 financial year, McInnes Wilson Lawyers had the opportunity to work on a number of buy and sell side transactions across a broad range of different industries.
The link below provides readers with access to our firm's annual M&A Review, where our corporate and commercial experts provide market insights based on their recent transaction experiences. The M&A Review also provides a snapshot of the deals our firm advised on last financial year.
Some of the key findings of our corporate and commercial teams include:
- Environment, Social and Governance (ESG): Stakeholders are more informed about ESG and its impact on value. Faced with spiralling inflation and interest rate rises, stakeholders are sensitive to the cost structure of target companies, and ESG now forms part of due diligence almost without exception.
- Warranties and Indemnities: Amid a heightened sense of risk in the current market conditions, buyers are naturally determined to scrutinise every transaction with greater granularity. However, elongated deal processes continue to be more vulnerable to failure. Accordingly, our firm has seen buyers actively seek to mitigate the majority of their transaction risk through warranty and indemnity.
- Earnouts: To address funding shortages and economic uncertainties, more and more buyers want to negotiate the inclusion of earnouts on transactions.
- Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity continues to be an area where there is potential for disruption. Particularly on larger transactions, there were instances on deals where bad actors sought to take advantages of the targets' cybersecurity flaws and to sabotage deal processes.
- Scrip Consideration: With the rising cost and lenders becoming more risk-averse, securing affordable transaction financing is becoming increasingly challenging. This has resulted in increased scrip consideration being offered on transactions.
For a full copy of our M&A Review, please click the link below: