Critique of deal coverage overblown

TheDeal.com executive editor Yvette Kantrow writes that a recent critique of merger and acquisition coverage by The Audit used examples to make its point that were weak.

Kantrow wrote, “Indeed, The Audit’s evidence that ‘the business press loves the deal’ amounts to excerpts from three recent first-day stories in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times. Though rather anodyne to us, The Audit contends they use ‘overheated language.’ A WSJ piece on Barclays plc’s play for ABN Amro Holding NV, for example, credits the deal with ‘unleashing’ a ‘long-awaited’ wave of bank mergers in Europe that will ‘reshape the industry as the continent’s financial giants yield to the lure of size and global scale.’

“Feverish yet? Neither are we. Especially since the WSJ’s Heard on the Street column warned the next day that investors who have been bidding up European bank shares in anticipation of consolidation ‘would do well to be skeptical.’ So much for blindly loving deals.

“A few years ago — say 1999 or 2000 — we might have agreed with The Audit. The media adored deals then, best exemplified by all those big merger ‘scoops’ that were strategically leaked to the WSJ in exchange for good placement and generally positive stories. The Audit hints that this is still going on — it lists the ‘business press infrastructure’ and the ‘public-relations infrastructure that manages major deal announcements’ as factor behind ‘the unproductive deal churn.’ But we haven’t seen a rash of really egregious placements for years.”

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