'There's More M&A to Come,' JMP Securities' Lehmann Tells BloombergTV
NEW YORK (TheStreet) --M&A's have been on a steady climb so far this year and with the Yahoo!
(YHOO) , Verizon (VZ) deal finalized on Monday morning, Bloomberg TV's "Bloomberg GO" hosted JMP Securities president Mark Lehmann, who discussed whether M&A has peaked for the year.
"I think there's more M&A to come. When you look at the recent M&A transactions, it speaks to the M&A environment and I think you're just going to see more," Lehmann noted, before calling attention to where the next deal may manifest itself.
Shedding light on companies such as Salesforce.com (CRM) which made an aggressive push to acquire LinkedIn (LNKD) during its bidding process, as well as IBM (IBM) which has been active in the past, Lehmann believes "you will see more M&A throughout the year."
Moreover, he feels these types of acquisitions, in particular the two between Yahoo! and Verizon along with Microsoft (MSFT) and LinkedIn, remain vital for both acquirers, and thus he does not expect this trend to slow down.
One company who has long been speculated as the next powerhouse to possibly enter into an M&A agreement is Apple (AAPL). Lehmann explained that this, on the surface, makes sense because he notes that Apple's "current growth is limited."
"They need to get into some new markets that are both high end and high growth. Driver-less cars are something people talk about, as well as artificial intelligence. I would expect them to go with those avenues," Lehmann said.
One final M&A trend Lehmann discussed was the older, established media companies infiltrating the tech space.
"There's no doubt the traditional media companies are trying to figure that out. I don't think this is going to slow down, because of the continued move to the cloud, to the web, and to mobile is not decelerating whatsoever," Lehmann explained.