Rob Kindler, global chair of the Mergers and Acquisition Group at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, said the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump should usher in a favorable deal environment, based on his first administration.
"I can't really recall a time where I thought there was this amount of pent-up demand heading into a new administration," Kindler said.
Kindler counsels private and public companies on mergers and acquisitions and other significant corporate transactions. He has decades of experience in takeover defense as well as in proxy contests and other corporate governance matters. Before joining Paul Weiss, he was vice chairman, global head of M&A, and a member of the Management Committee at Morgan Stanley.
While Kindler was at Morgan Stanley, the firm advised T-Mobile in its deal with Sprint and Spirit in the JetBlue deal. Paul Weiss advised Spirit.
Kindler spoke to Barron's on Nov. 27. This transcript of the conversation has been edited
Barron's: How would you describe the current climate for mergers and acquisitions?
Rob Kindler: We're going through a period where there is just increased activity. There are a lot more conversations going on than there were earlier this year. I think it's the beginning of a very favorable M&A environment.
How do you expect the environment to change from a regulatory perspective for U.S. and cross-border deals under the new Trump administration?
Under the Biden administration, virtually nothing could get done. So people were staying away from even negotiating transactions. Under the new administration, I think it's going to be far more favorable. We saw when Trump was in office last time that his administration was willing to look at transactions that, prior to then, would not have been approved.
The best example I can give is the T-Mobile-Sprint transaction. If that kind of transaction had been tried under a Democratic administration, which it had been [under President Obama], there's no way there would have been regulatory approval.
Under the prior Trump administration, they were willing to look at transactions to see whether they could be structured in ways that were pro-competitive. And letting T-Mobile and Sprint merge was very pro-competitive. It created a third wireless company, in addition to Verizon and AT&T.That was very competitive. What we found in that administration was a willingness to actually look closely at transactions and be creative.
Could deals that might have been deterred or turned down come back together?
I think many of those deals could come back together. Unfortunately, because of the Biden administration, some of those deals that were rejected ended up badly for companies and shareholders...... (The rest continues similarly with each question followed by Rob Kindler's response formatted as blockquotes) ...