Private Equity

As we head into the winter months, one trend that has the potential to “chill” activity in the market is the broader and more aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement taken by the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. This heightened regulatory scrutiny has resulted in lengthier deal timelines – as long as two years – in some cases and has injected increased uncertainty into the M&A and debt financing process. Borrowers, already facing persistent inflation and steep interest rates, also are seeing increased costs on deals with long regulatory timelines in the form of additional compensation paid to lenders in exchange for lenders holding the underwritten debt commitments for longer periods of time. Read the alert here.