M&A bargain hunters explore options

Depressed prices and the availability of previously out-of-reach assets may encourage the largest firms to relax their cautious approach, say PE Live panellists.

The majors’ recent playbook of a laser focus on capital discipline and eschewing large-scale M&A may be at least temporarily suspended to take advantage of buying opportunities in a market upended by Covid-19, panellists on the second PE Live webcast suggested this week. “In [previous price] crises, it has been the case that the big players have looked at strategic deals,” says Anthony Patten, head of oil and gas at law firm Shearman & Sterling. Patten can point to his own past experience working in-house in the 2000s for Shell, which looked “for a very long time” at a move on UK-headquartered BG Group but took until after the 2014 price slump to execute on that strategy. “So, there