Bankers and Buyers Sound Off On Current State of Doing Deals

The looming collapse of pooling was anticipated with glee by at least two acquisitive corporate panel members at Credit Suisse First Boston’s annual M&A conference, held on May 14 in New York. Lee Dayton, VP of corporate development and real estate at IBM Corp., was greeted with audience laughter when he said, “As a company who can’t pool because we’ve been buying back our stock, I’m looking forward to the end of pooling.” Dayton participated in the conference’s “Issues in Technology M&A” session, along with three CSFB bankers-William Brady, head of corporate finance, Joe Josephson, managing director in technology M&A, and Frank Quattrone, head of the firm’s technology group. M&A Co-head Gordon Rich moderated the discussion on technology consolidation, which has been fueled largely by “designed for sale” start-ups, according to Quattrone.