Jeremy Bendeich, CIO at Avoca Investment Management shares his views on the sectors and stocks open to M&A activity

Jeremy Bendeich, CIO at Avoca Investment Management shares his views on the sectors and stocks open to M&A activity. M&A will pick up as corporates and PE have access to cheap funding, PE 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.