Evercore's Roger Altman Discusses M&A Activity,

Roger Altman is the founder of Evercore, a Wall Street investment banking firm. He was a recent

and offered his expert views on the state of M&A activity in the market. Altman began the conversation by pointing out that there was a "huge outbreak" of "severe" market volatility in early 2016. This was due to plunging commodity prices and taking stocks down with them. Accordingly, these events put a "chill" on M&A transactions, particularly among public companies. "If your share prices are plunging, whatever one might think the 'textbook' says, you tend to re-trench rather than look outwards," Altman said. However, he continued that the equity market recovered from January's "chill" and "confidence has returned in terms of transactions." Altman was then asked if the slew of M&A activity seen this week are merely deals that were in the pipeline as early as January but pushed out a few months amid market volatility. He answered that some of the recent transactions were not ones that were evaluated earlier this year and deferred, although that may not necessarily be the case for every transaction.