The human element: highs, lows and loose ends of 2015

Last year was a bumper year for mergers and acquisitions. Recovering prospects and relatively low price-earnings ratios made the takeover arena alluring: the global volume of deals looks certain to have passed the $4.3 trillion record of 2007. Among the new giants are Shell-BG, Heinz-Kraft, Pfizer-Allergan and monster brewer AB InBev-SAB Miller; bonuses reaped by London M&A bankers will fund basement diggings bigger than Crossrail.

So you might expect me to name my deal of the year: but no. Instead let me quote from Deloitte’s M&A Market Trends Report 2015, based on a survey (in February) of 2,500 US executives: ‘Despite increased deal-making activity — and expectations for another blockbuster year — almost 90 per cent of respondents said that completed transactions have fallen short of generating expected return on investment, the same as last year. On the private equity side, 96 per cent of respondents said their deals fell short of targeted returns.’

That says it all.