NEW YORK (Reuters) - Companies considering announcing a deal will likely do so in the next six weeks to avoid a potentially more stringent regulatory environment under a new U.S. president in 2009, a JPMorgan Chase & Co strategist said on Wednesday.
"The window for large transactions, remember we have a lot of corporate cash sitting around, is going to close in six weeks," Tom Lee, JPMorgan's chief U.S. equity strategist, told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.
Because it takes time for large deals to get regulatory approval, any deals done after July likely would not be completed before the inauguration of the next U.S. president, who will appoint a new attorney general, Lee said.
"Because if you don't announce a merger now, you're going to end up having a deal put in front of a new attorney general who takes office on January 21, potentially risking a different administration and view on large mergers."
Lee added that a new attorney general may be less inclined to proceed with a deal that began the approval process in the previous administration.
While merger and acquisition activity has been tepid this year, there have been a number of big deals announced in the last couple of weeks. Verizon Wireless, for example, said it would buy Alltel Corp for $28 billion and XTO Energy (XTO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) announced a $4 billion deal for crude oil and natural gas producer Hunt Petroleum Corp.
(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
(Reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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