Mars’ announcement Monday that it would buy veterinary specialist VCA (WOOF) for $9.1 billion, which was coupled with a host of other multi-billion transactions, marks the first true Merger Monday of 2017.
And the spate of deals, which also included McDonald’s (MCD) agreement to sell a majority stake in its China business to Carlyle (CG) and Citic for $2.1 billion and Takeda’s $5.2 billion deal for Leukemia drug maker Ariad (ARIA) , is likely to persist through the rest of the year, though don’t expect them all to be such large-cap deals, according to experts.
