Texas M&A Rebounded in Q4 of 2013

© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.By Mark Curriden, JD Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook (January 30) – Texas-based businesses rediscovered their M&A mojo during the fourth quarter of 2013, ending an otherwise slightly above average year of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and initial public offerings with a flurry of deals. The final quarter of 2013 witnessed the third most M&A activity in a three-month span among Texas companies since the start of the recession in 2008, according to new data that is scheduled to be released Thursday by mergermarket, an independent global research firm associated with the Financial Times. There were 401 publicly announced business transactions with a combined value of $123.6 billion in 2013 – a decline of 13 percent in deal volume from the year before, mergermarket reports. M&A experts attribute the year-over-year decline to the fact that 2012 ended with a fevered rush to close deals. “The M&A numbers in 2012 were positively skewed on the high-end because businesses wanted to beat any major tax changes and were worried about the fiscal cliff issues,” says Ken Menges, an M&A partner at Akin Gump in Dallas. “2012 took the wind out of the sails for the first half…