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Home » Blogs » Ken MacFadyen

Identifying the New Era of Rainmakers

By Ken MacFadyen, MU Blog

July 27, 2010

I get the sense that the M&A market is losing its personality. This seems especially true as the older dealmakers, from the '80s, start to fade away.

At my first job as a reporter, I kept waiting for that call, “Blue horseshoe loves Anacott Steel.” I’m still waiting.

In this new era, Blue horseshoe’s secretary is tasked with redirecting my call to a third-party PR flak, who asks for a spelling of Anacott so they can check with Blue horseshoe. Three days later, a press release is delivered to my inbox, with Blue horseshoe issuing a statement about how excited he is to work with the management team, describing the deal as "win/win" for everyone involved. The terms of the transaction, of course, are not disclosed.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I just have a hard time picturing the likes of Carl Icahn, Ira Harris or Eric Gleacher uttering such niceties, or even allowing an intern in the PR department to put such words in their mouths.

With that said, I know there are plenty of personalities still out there. They’re just a little harder to pick out In the next month, Mergers & Acquisitions is going to be putting together our debut 'Rainmakers' feature. The M&A community loves league tables, so this is our attempt to distill it down one more level, to the people working on the deal.

As a publication that caters to the middle market, we’re more interested in the number of deals than the total volume, so we’ll be trying to highlight the multi-taskers in our audience. We’re also looking to delve into the stories behind the deals.

As I’ve alluded to, our Rainmaker issue is about identifying the personalities that not only drive the market, but add some color to it, too.

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