Jeremy Bendeich, CIO, Avoca Investment Management, shares his view on M&A activity and potential targets

Jeremy Bendeich, CIO, Avoca Investment Management, shares his view on M&A activity and potential targets. M&A will pick up as corporates and Private Equity have access to cheap funding. Private Equity needs to recycle capital, and corporates struggling for revenue growth resort to acquisitions. The targets are not likely to be high PE, high rated market darlings. Rather they will be stocks with management issues, large cost out opportunities, or value creative corporate restructuring. IRESS, for example, has two businesses one provides financial planning software and the other a dominate, albeit declining, financial information services business. The market might potentially value the two businesses more highly if they were separated or if the financial information services business could be sold to a business like Factset.