There was a lot of action in 2021 in enterprise M&A — once totaled, my top 10 deals came in at just under $121 billion. And the biggest enterprise deal of the year by far — Oracle’s bid to buy Cerner — happened as I was writing this post.
The final tally doesn’t include what would have been the third largest deal when Zoom agreed to buy Five9 last summer for $14.7 billion. That deal eventually broke down, as Zoom’s pandemic stock price bubble burst, and the companies ultimately decided to go their separate ways.
Meanwhile the second-biggest deal, Microsoft’s bid to buy Nuance Communications is stuck in regulatory limbo in the U.K., as regulators worry that it could give Microsoft too much power in the healthcare market. The U.K. decision bears watching, given that Visa’s $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid was scuttled last year when U.S. authorities sued to block the deal and the parties eventually decided to walk away.
Read more/Source: Tech Crunch
