Buzz Archive:
Deal Certainty —The Fallacy of a New Market

by David Fox and Daniel E. Wolf of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, 12/8/2009

In the aftermath of the economic crisis that began in mid-2007, much ink has been spilled on the lessons learned by buyers and sellers regarding the pitfalls of deal certainty and the development of new paradigms for both financial and strategic buyers. Many assert that in the post-crash M&A market there has been substantial cross-pollination between the traditional deal structures used by those two categories of buyers in the pre-2007 period, with financial buyers being forced to accept deal terms that were once only demanded of strategic buyers and with strategic buyers demanding some of the looser deal commitment terms that previously benefited only financial buyers.

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