Louis Lehot Assesses 2024 Election Result, Prospect of Tech Deal Resurgence
Foley & Lardner LLP partner Louis Lehot appeared across legal and business press to discuss the likelihood of a resurgence across capital markets, venture capital, and tech M&A following the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Lehot told Business Insider he expects more breathing room for companies from an antitrust perspective, explaining that, “They have been frozen out for nearly four years, essentially warned not to even try to acquire new companies, and in some cases, to prepare for their looming defenestration.” This will “enable Big Tech buyers to return to the table,” Lehot added. His comments also appeared in Entrepreneur, MSN, and Yahoo! Tech.
In a second Business Insider article, Lehot described how limits on tech M&A have “caused the rate of venture capital return of distributed proceeds to fall drastically, making new capital formation near impossible.” He shared insight that Silicon Valley is anticipating a relaxation in the government’s approach to M&A more generally, creating an environment “to enable exits and new capital formation, which is the cycle of innovation.”
In one interview with Law360, Lehot emphasized the current market conditions venture capitalists are looking for.
“If you talk to venture capitalists, they’ll tell you they put their pencils down some time in April and they’re not going to pick them up again until you see three things,” he said. “The first is interest rates having a marked decline, the second thing is an IPO window that is open again, and three, that the political uncertainty is resolved. I think we will have all those things reunited by January.”
In another Law360 article, Lehot emphasized how the last few years have been a “dark time for startups and the venture capital industry,” noting the “flywheel of deploy, grow, and then harvest, and then grow again” was interrupted. He added that the prospective change in leadership at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission “will be transformational for Silicon Valley and the tech and life sciences industries.”
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