Trump Victory Clouds Outlook for Time Warner-AT&T, Other Mergers (reuters.com)

U.S. corporate dealmakers were likely to put major merger plans on hold as they assess whether U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will follow through on his populist promises and a threat to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, or act more like traditional business-friendly Republican administrations. From the report:Trump's rhetoric and the personal nature of the campaign, which included little discussion of policy, left many uncertain about the new U.S. leader's plans, including how his administration will handle mega-mergers. Wall Street braced for a drop in deals, with Goldman Sachs on Wednesday projecting a 20 to 30 percent downside for earnings of banks that focus on merger and acquisition advice, and Jefferies saying that uncertainty about Trump's policy on trade, healthcare, taxes and energy could hamper underwriting activity and M&A globally. "I think a lot of deals will hit the pause button for a bit until we get some clarity on whether President Trump will moderate or be as disruptive as some expect," said a senior Wall Street banker who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak with the media. "It's going to be a tough environment for everything until we see how [Trump] behaves as a leader," the banker added.

Comments

I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers

[JoeyRox]

Rhetoric wins elections but actions speak louder than words. Trump spent his entire career having to skirt around regulations to get things done so I highly doubt he's going to do anything that gets in the way of business doing whatever it wants to do, including performing anti-competitive mergers.

Re:I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers

[swb]

Trump truly is a wildcard and nobody really knows what he will actually do in power, but he openly acknowledged the pay-to-play nature of politics and taking advantage of it as a businessman.

But he also said that that was broken and shouldn't be happening, and that one of his strengths was that he was best positioned to fix it because he knew exactly how it was broken as an insider participant.

I think it's certainly possible that he could block anti-competitive mergers based on his campaign rhetoric, and more importantly, the open contempt for him that establishment insiders had for him and his campaign, Republicans included. He doesn't owe those people *anything*, if anything they owe him -- he delivered the White House *and* the downticket vote.

Personally I think it's a mistake to see him as just another big business Republican -- if that was the case, he wouldn't have faced such withering criticism from the Republican establishment and probably wouldn't have run at all. He probably would have just kept writing checks to stooges in DC.