Brenon Daly directs the financial analysis of the 451 Research Market Insight and M&A KnowledgeBase products within S&P Global Market Intelligence. He is responsible for all financial coverage within those product lines, as well as supporting investment- and acquisition-related activity by investment banking and private capital clients. Brennon arrived at S&P Global Market Intelligence through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research. Before joining 451 Research in mid-2006, Brenon worked at research boutique for technology-focused hedge funds, as well as trading equity and options on his own book. Brenon began his career in 1991 as a founding reporter at the first English-language newspaper in the former Eastern Bloc. Brenon moved to Vienna in 1995 to run the local bureau for United Press International before taking on an analyst position with the Economist Group, where he researched and wrote reports for The Economist Intelligence Unit and the regional publication of The Economist. In addition to earning a degree from the University of Kansas, Brenon studied at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria).
Mastercard says it will pay $2.65 billion for threat intelligence provider Recorded Future, a landmark pairing of an information security startup with a payments giant. The second-largest US credit card company indicated that it would use the target's technology to bolster its overall cyber defenses, especially around fraud prevention.
After an unusually long layoff at the top end of the M&A market, Salesforce says it will pay $1.9 billion for backup provider Own Company. It is getting a bit of discount in its latest blockbuster, arbitraging the fact that private market valuations still haven't caught up to those on Wall Street.
With monthly spending on tech transactions in August continuing to flatline, the M&A market appears to have found the bottom. What's still missing is a path back up. Both the overall value of deals and, crucially, their valuations are still mired well below pre-pandemic levels.
For years, CrowdStrike has talked up its Falcon platform to Wall Street. It got much quieter about that strategy in its latest quarterly report. The change was quite a reversal for a company that has used a "land and expand" sales model to build itself into the second-highest-valued cybersecurity vendor.
Just as little boats get tossed around more than ocean liners when the seas get choppy, smaller businesses tend to get hit harder by market volatility than companies of size. That's long been the view from outside, including investors. But now the "size matters" message is getting internalized at the companies themselves.
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