By Lucy Saddleton, Managing Editor
About this three-part webinar series:
In the first installment of The Legal Innovation Forum’s three-part Capital Markets Webinar Series in March 2025, we brought together thought leaders and innovators from both sides of the border to explore the evolving North American market of mergers and acquisitions in an era of political instability, rising interest rates and cost of capital, and the new tariff and trade playbook.
Our attendees heard about the future outlook for global dealflow and gained critical insights into the evolving regulatory state, and an understanding of the most active sectors for deals in 2025.
This panel featured David Felicissimo, general counsel at Valsoft Corporation; Nigel Rughani, VP, corporate development at Vertex; Christine Kim, associate at Clifford Chance; John Clifford, partner at McMillan; and Marshall Eidinger, partner at Bennett Jones; together with our moderator, Andrew Bowyer, founder and CEO at ADB Insights.
This three-part blog series captures the highlights of the discussion in bite-sized blog posts with corresponding video clips.
In association with
HEALTHCARE AND LIFE SCIENCES
The final part of this panel recap examines the landscape for M&A within certain specific sectors. Christine Kim, a US-based associate at Clifford Chance, discussed trends in the healthcare and life sciences sector, including the impact of AI, and the potential for strategic partnerships between big tech companies and biotechs.
2025 is off to a strong start for the healthcare and life sciences sector with around US 18-billion in acquisitions in Q1 – mostly in the form of takeovers. Kim anticipates the US presidential administration will pursue a less aggressive antitrust enforcement agenda in certain spaces including biotechs.
In terms of deal size, Kim noted that last year saw mainly smaller deals, compared to the mega deals of previous years.
“I think it’s TBD whether that short-term trend continues, but maybe it takes some of the pressure off of dealmakers and other constituencies and brings some optionality to the table for these different sizes of deals,” said Kim.
This sector intersects with the tech sector, Kim noted, so AI is expected to stay top of mind as new technologies are folded into the process of drug discovery and development. There is also a growing interest in big AI companies that are pursuing strategic partnerships with biotechs, Kim added.
One potential trend to look out for in this space is companies growing via collaborations, licensing or strategic partnerships.
“We’ll see what 2025 brings, but I would not be surprised if we saw more of those alternatives to M&A,” said Kim.
ENTERTAINMENT
Marshall Eidinger, a Toronto-based partner at Bennett Jones, highlighted the growth in the entertainment sector, with increased interest from European and US buyers, as media and gaming companies are staying outside of the tariff regime.
“With the exception of a few household names in Canada, the bidders I generally see are European and US,” said Eidinger. “I think that’s a factor of FX [Foreign Exchange], a factor of dry powder, I think a little bit of a factor of sophistication.” As these companies come to market, they will continue to sell, Eidinger predicted, while companies impacted by the tariff regime will struggle.
AUTOMOTIVE
The discussion moved to the automotive sector, which is expected to be particularly hard hit by the current tariff environment.
“You see reports that it’s going to be worse for the industry than COVID was, and worse than the semiconductor crunch was,” said John Clifford, a partner at McMillan in Toronto. “Overall, it will have a great chill on M&A activity in the automotive sector in the near term.”
Clifford commented that the tariff impacts are being experienced at a time when the industry is going through a period of existential change and new market entrants, as manufacturers move away from combustion engines to electric vehicles, requiring an immense amount of capital. The tariffs have further destabilized the industry in this period of change, potentially leading to accelerated industry consolidation, Clifford predicted.
The shifting tariff structure may also affect planned investments in electric vehicles as investors rethink their plans, potentially resulting in opportunistic acquisitions of troubled assets, Clifford suggested.
TECHNOLOGY
David Felicissimo, general counsel at Montreal-based Valsoft Corp., discussed the impact of AI on traditional software products, the potential for disruption, and the need for businesses to adapt or face competition from new AI-based products.
Felicissimo has seen a lot of movement in the AI and cybersecurity space as well as software that supports the automotive industry, and software for healthcare. AI valuations are currently very high so Valsoft is looking less towards acquisitions in that space, and more towards building it in-house.
“I think businesses are either going to adapt, or potentially we’ll see what we call a milk out,” said Felicissimo. “They’ll basically milk it out as much as they can and the next generation of products will be AI based.”
As a tax compliance enterprise software company, US-based Vertex Inc. continues to focus on assets that offer enabling technology, such as AI, to provide operational efficiencies and the opportunity for an improved customer experience for clients. The company is also interested in product acquisitions that will expand its geographical coverage.
“I think companies are spending on AI, not just organically, but also inorganically, and that was certainly evidenced by the recent acquisition by ServiceNow of Moveworks, which is more or less an agentic AI business,” said Nigel Rughani, VP, corporate development at Vertex.
Watch this section of the panel discussion here now: Video time stamps:35:15 – 56:00