The American Lawyer: As M&A Quiets and Headwinds Pick Up, Dealmakers Reckon With a Slowdown

The early months of 2022 have experienced a drop-off in M&A deal volume following a record setting year in 2021, which has been called the best in history. The US$296.7 billion in completed deals last month was down 33% from January and 35% from last February. In 2021, dealmakers owed much of their heavy workloads to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low and poured money into the economy. “You had a recovering global economy, broad availability to capital, access to low-cost financing and favorable government policies that supported all that, as well as additional government investments in hard infrastructure,” O’Melveny & Myers LLP corporate department co-chair Eric Richards said.

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