Gary W. Herschman and Paul D. Gilbert, Members of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Newark and Nashville offices, respectively, co-authored an article in the Bloomberg BNA Health Care Daily Report, titled “INSIGHT: Strong Health-Care Deal Activity Seen in 2018’s First Half.”
Following is an excerpt:
The first half of 2018 saw a strong wave of M&A and deal making activity across nearly all sectors of the U.S. healthcare industry. The second half of 2018 likely will be just as robust.
The continuing trend of industry consolidation has already outpaced what was a record 2017 from a transactional volume perspective. On a comparative basis, the list of announced and/or closed mergers and acquisitions transactions for the year-to-date period ending in June 2018 totaled 530 transactions. This representing a 12.3 percent increase over the 472 announced and/or closed transactions for the YTD period ending in June 2017.
The continued buoyancy of the healthcare M&A environment in the first half of 2018 is further validated by the lack of deal-making seasonality. Even though the summer months typically tend to be slower in terms of the volume and velocity of overall deal-making, 71.0 percent of the 530 announced and/or closed transactions for the first half of 2018 were completed in the months of April, May, and June, thus highlighting the resiliency and motivation of both buyers and sellers.