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Michigan merger and acquisition activity is dominated by technology and market share grabs.
In 2016, most of Crain's Biggest Deals fell in those categories, thanks to a favorable lending market and new technologies demands in the market space. And despite uncertain federal tax and trade policy, impending interest rate hikes and a slowing global market, M&A experts don't predict that to change this year.
"Really, last year should have been heavily influenced by uncertainty in the economy and the election," said Cliff Roesler, co-founder and partner at Birmingham-based investment bank and M&A advisory firm Angle Advisors LLC. "And if you look at the calendar, it's a long time for a recession ... but the U.S. economy still hasn't fully recovered from the recession, so there's still been some running room and that's what we saw last year and continue to see today."
Canada's largest utility owner, Fortis Inc., paid $11.3 billion for Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp., a deal with a 33 percent premium over ITC's trading price. Power companies have been grappling with flat demand and rising costs. ITC, whose transmission lines earned the highest return on capital in the U.S. utility space, offered promising growth to Fortis.
American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. was stagnating as axles offer limited technological advancement in the burgeoning connected, autonomous and alternative propulsion automotive space. Its pending $3.3 billion acquisition of Metaldyne Performance Group Inc. provides American Axle a new powertrain components product portfolio as well as a niche in the foundry...