Financial crisis, we hardly knew you. Over the past 18 months, merger and acquisition transactions have returned full-force, particularly for U.S. businesses. However, it’s not just U.S. businesses that are acquisition targets, as cross-border M&A has risen to staggering heights recently. According to Baker & McKenzie’s 2014 report “Going Global: Strategy and Execution in Cross-Border M&A,” businesses conducted 4,785 cross-border deals in 2013, the largest annual volume since the end of the global financial crisis. And, based on the first six months of 2014, that trend does not seem to be subsiding any time soon.
These numbers mean that many in-house counsel, no matter the industry, may be receiving a heavier dose of M&A work than ever before. Michelle Warner, corporate vice president, deputy general counsel and secretary at Motorola Solutions, Inc., believes that the increase is the result of a “snowball effect” that has developed in multinational corporations in the past several years.
