(Bloomberg) -- The threat of more global trade tariffs could push companies into deals to shield themselves, according to one of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s top bankers.
“Those will provide a catalyst for M&A, in the sense that you’re going to have to get ahead of some of these,” Dwayne Lysaght, co-head of mergers and acquisitions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said in a Bloomberg TV interview Friday. “Do you need to move, for example, or seek production outside of Europe? Do you need to put more in the US?”
“CEOs, boards, management teams, they want to get ahead of these types of things. They’re not going to wait for them to impact them,” he added.
US president-elect Donald Trump has promised an array of protectionist policies to slash the US trade deficit. Major economies including the European Union have signaled they will defend themselves, after several years in the crossfire of increasingly heated trade policies between China and the US.
Overall, Lysaght said he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the backdrop for dealmaking this year, with signs of rising growth, a long-awaited drop in interest rates and greater political clarity after a year of seismic elections around the world.
“We’re in a more stable financing market,” he said. “I don’t want to sound overly confident, but I think we’re confident that that has reached a level where people want to get on and do the transactions.”
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