M&A activity is back - with a caveat: deals are taking longer amid heightened due diligence.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: Mergers and acquisitions

Welcome to the new normal.

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After a tough few years Colorado M&A is back almost all the way.

That "almost" caveat comes because mergers and acquisitions continue to require an extraordinary amount of hand-holding and due diligence, delays, hesitation -- all of which add up to increased transaction risk.

Still, deals are getting done, particularly but not entirely within the middle-market M&A bracket occupied by most Colorado professionals.

Internationally, mergers and acquisitions negotiated a tough year, especially against the background of Europe's sovereign-debt crisis.

Locally, deal professionals had more fun. This had a lot to do with their sub-bulge bracket clientele.

Middle market means different things to different people. Denver-based Integris Partners defines its target market in the $10 million to $100 million range.

"The bulge-bracket companies need a little bit more hand-holding, a little bit more CYA than actually adding a whole lot of value," says Managing Director Patrick R. Seese. "These billion-dollar companies have a lot of sophistication, so you are often just making sure they are on track, holding their hands. In the middle-market, certainly the lower middle-market, a lot of these owners don't have the sophistication when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, so it ends up being a lot more fun"

This past year Colorado M&A experts ended up having fun and making money, too.

Not that all Colorado M&A practitioners are mid-market. Kevin Cudney of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck notes that his firm represents "some very un-Denver-like clients, such as Blackstone Apollo, Carl Icahn -- names you would not ordinarily associate with a Denver law firm."

"Most of our deals are in the $20 million to $150 million range, and then there are the larger transactions that are outliers that are well in excess of that," Cudney says. "Conversely, there are transactions that are smaller than that, usually as part of a longstanding relationship."

Colorado deals included examples from a variety of sectors, said Hendrik Jordaan, chair of Morrison & Foerster LLP's private equity investments and buyouts practice.

"We've got a significant energy backbone that continues to be active, whether it is pure E&P (exploration and production) or E&P services. That will continue to be robust; a very interesting trend recently. We have a deep and rich telecommunications in this town dating back to the US West days. Telecommunications...