The Year Of The M&A Boom Now Looks Even Crazier

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2014 is the year of Mergers & Acquisitions roaring back in a big way.

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And this morning's news of a proposed $80 billion deal between 21st Century Fox and Time Warner is yet another massive announcement in a year that saw seen the highest first-half volume of announced merger activity since 2007.

On June 30, we highlighted this chart from Goldman Sachs that showed M&A activity had hit $750 billion through the end of June, an annualized rate of about $1.5 trillion, on track for the most since 2007.

GS M&A

Goldman Sachs

Of course there's no guarantee that this deal will ever happen, here's some perspective on how the above chart might be updated in light of the latest news.

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Goldman M&A 2

Goldman Sachs

In just the last two days, more than $100 billion in M&A has been announced.

In addition to the Time Warner deal, yesterday tobacco giant Reynolds American announced a deal to acquire Lorillard in a deal worth $27.4 billion.

And these deals are in addition to a number of smaller, but still large, deals that have been announced just this month.

Tyson Foods is acquiring Hillshire Brands in a deal worth $8.55 billion, and engineering firm AECOM is acquiring URS Corporation in a $4 billion deal.

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