ANALYSIS: M&A Lawyers Still Grappling With ‘Covid-19’ Provisions

We’ve been following the evolution of coronavirus-related contract provisions in mergers and acquisitions deal agreements since the first days of the pandemic. Our review of first-half 2021 U.S. mega deal agreements suggests that—aside from the material adverse effect (MAE) exclusion of pandemics explicitly covering Covid-19, which we believe can now comfortably be called a market standard—there is still quite a bit of variation in how top-ranking M&A firms are addressing the ongoing pandemic in major deal agreements.

The varying drafting approaches in these headline-making deal agreements suggest that many deal parties are still spending time discussing and negotiating how to ...