Deals

Dead, Delayed, Renegotiated: Deals and Fights Over Them Pile Up

  • More than $10 billion in transactions canceled in past week
  • Real estate, retail, IPOs hit as companies face uncertainty
The Essex House Hotel.Source: Karl Blackwell/Lonely Planet Images
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One megadeal can’t make up for all the others that have fallen by the wayside during the Covid-19 crisis.

While executives at Telefonica SA and Liberty Global Plc were hashing out the final details of their $39 billion deal to merge O2 with Virgin Media over the past week, at least 17 other transactions were falling apart, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In total, more than $10 billion of mergers, acquisitions and investments have been terminated in the past seven days, the data show, with many more under threat as acquirers try to back out of agreements or renegotiate terms.