Corporate debt deals totalled $35.1-billion between April and June, financial data service Refinitiv said in a report to be released Wednesday, nearly doubling the $17.9-billion borrowed during the same period in 2023. The figure represents the second-highest quarterly debt issuance in at least 12 years, surpassed only by the lending frenzy of mid-2020 as companies stockpiled cash in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Deal-making, meanwhile, continued to decline with M&A involving Canadian businesses totalling $63.3-billion in the quarter, 1.8 per cent lower on a year-over-year basis and more than 4 per cent below the 10-year second-quarter average.the top investment bank for stock deals in the first half of 2024, said there was “indigestion in markets early this year where people expected rates to come screaming down, and that was more hope than it was science I think, so now we’ve had a reset.
Jeremy Fraiberg, co-chair of the mergers and acquisitions practice at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP – the top legal adviser for M&A in Canada during the first half of 2024 – also thinks M&A is going to rebound, just not before the economic uncertainty surrounding the U.S. election is resolved.