Business leaders had plenty of reasons to worry in the first half of 2019: Economic growth slowed, geopolitical tensions were on the rise and the trade war seemed unending.
But they looked past all that to strike big deals at a record pace, according to The New York Times.
A flurry of so-called megamergers—those valued at $10 billion or more—during the first six months pushed the value of announced acquisitions in the United States above $1 trillion for the first time, according to data from Refinitiv. Worldwide, the value of deals stood at about $2 trillion.
In June alone, acquisitions worth more than $400 billion were announced, the most in a single month this year. That included large purchases like AbbVie’s $63 billion deal for Allergan, an $86 billion merger of United Technologies and Raytheon, and Salesforce.com’s $16 billion acquisition of Tableau Software.
