单选题
There is nothing like a good bidding war to lift capitalism"s spirits. And that may be exactly what is about to happen after Kraft made a $17 billion bid for Cadbury on September 7th. The well-known British confectioner straightly rejected the American food giant"s offer, saying it "fundamentally undervalues" the company, which could continue to thrive on its own.
Kraft"s move is one of several in recent days that have raised hopes of a new wave of mergers and acquisitions just as it seemed, after a summer of inactivity, that 2009 would be a declining year for M&A. On September 8th Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom said they would merge their British mobile-phone operations, respectively T-Mobile and Orange, to create a new market leader. On August 31st Disney bought superhero factory Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, and Baker Hughes offered $5.5 billion for its fellow Houston-based energy-services firm, BJ Services.
Perhaps this will prove to be nothing more than a dead-cat bounce, a brief increase of long-overdue deals that were held back until senior executives and investment bankers returned from the beach. After all, dealmaking had fallen to unnaturally low levels in the aftermath of last year"s financial panic and subsequent economic slump, so a burst of post-summer action was always a possibility without it necessarily implying a turn in the cycle.
Yet hopes are rising that the recent outbreak of deals might indicate a genuine turning point in the merger market. "While it is not yet evident in the statistics, the level of corporate dialogue has picked up recently," says Christopher Ventresca, co-head of North American M&A for JPMorgan. One reason is that many firms now think systemic risk in the financial system has fallen to a low level. Another, he says, is that they have done the defensive work needed to ensure their earnings after last year"s panic., refinancing debt where necessary and making sure that they have plenty of what the crisis revealed as the possible difference between corporate life and death—financial liquidity.
With that sorted out—thanks, not least, to a dramatic reopening of the debt markets, at least for more creditworthy companies—managers are trying to figure out how to expand their businesses in what forecasts suggest will remain a gloomy economy for years, at least in rich countries. Buying growth from outside, rather than generating it organically, may be the easiest option. There is also a momentum effect in M&A, especially as the cycle turns. "Seeing some well-known firms start to do deals will create more confidence in others," says Mr Ventresca.
Share prices are also now in a sweet spot for a revival of deals, says David Bianco, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. They have increased decisively enough to inspire confidence that the worst is over, yet valuations are still depressed by historic standards and when compared with past recoveries from financial crises. In other words, there are bargains to be had.
单选题
Kraft"s bidding for Cadbury indicates that ______
单选题
When some people say the deals are "a dead-cat bounce", they mean ______
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] a dead-cat bounce(死猫跳，短期反弹)指a temporary recovery from a major drop in a stock"s price(在股价长期下跌的过程中一次短暂的恢复)。其实，第三段第一句后半句就是对a dead-cat bounce的进一步说明。本段第二句也提到了这种现象，其中尤其注意a burst of post-summer action(action这里根据上下文指合并交易活动)。