2016年最糟糕的几笔商业交易

也许是因为唐纳德·特朗普，或是伯尼·桑德斯，或是围绕大选的一切不确定性，又或许是美联储和利率上调。无论原因是什么，即便是股市的道琼斯指数进军2万点，都不足以维持商界交易的活力。对于并购，以及首次公开募股而言，2016年都是惨淡的一年。

2016年，美国的并购交易规模同比下滑了21%。而在融资方面，首次公开募股的融资数额也是2003年以来的最低值，以及1992年以来的第二低值。

不过，尽管交易变少了，却仍有相当一部分交易本不应该去做[说的就是你，威瑞森（Verizon）]，另外，过去几年的一些交易在今年瞩目的糟糕表现导致了它们的上榜。以下是《财富》（Fortune）选出的2016年最糟糕的交易。

威瑞森-雅虎

Perhaps it was Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or all the uncertainty around the election. Or maybe it was the Federal Reserve and the fact that interest rates began to rise. Whatever the reason, even the stock market's march to Dow 20,000 wasn't enough to the keep the business world's deal juices flowing. For mergers and acquisitions, and for initial public offerings in particular, 2016 was a flop.

U.S. M&A volume dropped 21% from the previous year. In terms of dollars raised, it was the lowest year for IPOs since 2003, and the second-lowest year since 1992.

But even through there were fewer deals, there were still a fair share of ones that should never have been announced in the first place (we're looking at you, Verizon), along with a couple from past years whose glaring flaws undid them this year. Here are Fortune's picks for the dumbest deals of 2016.

Verizon-Yahoo

甚至在雅虎（Yahoo）遭到两次大规模黑客攻击的消息传出之前，威瑞森对这家过气的电子邮件王者的出价就已经显得过高。他们7月宣布的48亿美元的收购报价，是雅虎现金流的5倍。对科技公司来说，这不算太多。比如即使是遭遇麻烦的Twitter，出售价格也达到了现金流的15倍。不过Twitter仍然在发展，而雅虎却没有。

曾经的神童、雅虎首席执行官梅丽莎·梅耶尔过去四年里一直试图扭转局势，公司开始转播足球比赛，还招来了凯蒂·柯丽克等鼎鼎有名的记者。但是没有效果。梅耶尔执掌公司期间，雅虎的核心业务价值缩水了24亿美元。现金流也从2012年的15亿美元下降到8,000万美元。

显然，威瑞森认为他们可以止住这种颓势。他们的策略可能是把雅虎和公司2015年收购的美国在线（AOL）合并，从而与谷歌（Google）与Facebook竞争。不过新的雅虎在线（YahoOL）距离赶超对手还有很长的路要走。而如今，遭到黑客攻击也导致雅虎的主要特色——安全和非工作邮件受到了质疑。威瑞森已经开始就收购价格重新展开谈判。市场估计他们会把开价降低10亿美元。不过38亿美元的收购价仍然太高了。

时代华纳的杰夫·比克斯所做的每一笔交易

Even before news surfaced that Yahoo had been the victim of two massive hacks, Verizon (vz) looked to be overpaying for the fallen king of email. The $4.8 billion bid, announced in July, values Yahoo at 5 times cash flow. That's not a lot for a tech company. Even troubled Twitter (twtr), for instance, trades at 15 times cash flow. But Twitter is still growing. Yahoo (yhoo) is not.

The once-wunderkind CEO Marissa Mayer has spent the past four years trying to turn the company around—streaming football games and hiring big-name journalists like Katie Couric. It hasn't worked. Yahoo's core business lost $2.4 billion in value under Mayer. And cash flow is down to just over $800 million, from $1.5 billion in 2012.

Verizon, of course, thinks it can stop the decline, perhaps by combining Yahoo with AOL, which it bought in 2015, to create a competitor to Google (googl) or Facebook (fb). But YahoOL has a lot of catching up to do. And now the hacking news has soured Yahoo's main asset—secure, non-work email. Verizon is already trying to renegotiate its buying price. The market thinks it will cut its bid for Yahoo by $1 billion. That may still mean it's paying $3.8 billion too much.

Every Deal Ever Done by Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes

时代华纳（Time Warner）的首席执行官杰夫·比克斯一直以来都在这家媒体巨头中大肆活动。今年，他们还计划与AT&T进行强强联合。不过直到2016年，我们才搞清楚比克斯之前进行的那些交易有多么糟糕。

在比克斯2009年把美国在线和时代华纳有线电视（Time Warner Cable）拆分后，两家公司的市值都开始飙升。《财富》的母公司时代（Time Inc.）则在2014年类似的拆分后市值下滑了。所以此举可能帮时代华纳的股东省了些钱——不过这不足以弥补比克斯其他拆分举动给他们带来的损失。

根据美国在线和时代华纳有线电视在被比克斯拆分后最终的收购价格，时代华纳的股价在AT&T合并的消息宣布之前可能高达103.65美元。而目前公司的实际股价只有96美元。AT&T提出要以每股107.5美元的价格收购时代华纳，如果这些公司没有被拆分，它们可以卖出更高的价钱。时代华纳拆分带来的损失还不仅于此。AT&T明显认为，时代华纳如果保留了有线电视业务，价值会更高，所以无论有没有AT&T的这次交易，假如比克斯没有把时代华纳有线电视拆分出去，时代华纳的股价本该高得多。

比克斯认为，美国在线、时代华纳有限公司和时代华纳都会因为规模更小，业务重点更明确而受益。但讽刺之处在于：假如真的如此，那按照比克斯的逻辑，与AT&T合并就是一次十分糟糕的交易了。

NantHealth的首次公开募股

Time Warner (twx) CEO Jeff Bewkes has long been wheeling and dealing atop the media giant, culminating in this year's proposed mega-merger with AT&T. Only in 2016, though, did it become clear how truly dumb Bewkes's previous deals have been.

Both AOL and Time Warner Cable (twc) soared in value after Bewkes spun them off in 2009. Time Inc. (time), the parent company of Fortune, has dropped in value after being similarly cast aside in 2014, so jettisoning it perhaps saved Time Warner shareholders some money--but not nearly enough to make up for how much they've missed on Bewkes' other spin-offs.

All told, Time Warner's shares, based on what AOL and Time Warner Cable were eventually acquired for after Bewkes tossed them aside, could have been worth as much as $103.65 before the AT&T deal was announced. Instead, they currently trade at around $96. AT&T has offered to pay $107.50 per share for Time Warner; if the company still owned those spin-offs, it could be selling for much more. And that conclusion doesn't factor in all the costs Time Warner incurred in the spin-offs. AT&T clearly thinks Time Warner is worth more when connected to a cable provider, so it's likely that Time Warner's shares would have been worth much more, with or without the AT&T deal, had Bewkes not spun off Time Warner Cable.

Bewkes has argued that AOL and Time Warner Cable, as well as Time Warner, have benefited from being smaller and having a tighter focus. But there's an irony there: if that argument is right, combining his company with AT&T is, by Bewkes's own logic, a very poor deal.

NantHealth's IPO

2015年底，洛杉矶湖人队的股东和洛杉矶最富有的人之一陈颂雄，推迟了他的公司NantHealth的首次公开募股日期。这家提供医疗测试、支付处理和医疗信息技术服务的公司最终在2016年6月上市。

也许他们应该等更长时间的。NantHealth的股价在挂牌交易的第一天飙升至21美元，不过之后就开始暴跌。如今，公司股价距离峰值已经下滑了超过50%，仅有约10.5美元，导致这成为了2016年最糟糕的首次公开募股之一。在首次公开募股时，陈颂雄表示他们是首家同时提供癌症基因组测试和账单服务的公司。不过是否有足够的医院和医生需要这种二合一的服务还不得而知。在2016年的前九个月，NantHealth亏损了1.24亿美元，较之2015年同期的5,400万美元还有所增加。

而且，在首次公开募股不足六个月后，这家公司似乎就开始缺乏现金了。12月底，NantHealth又通过发行可转换债券募集了1亿美元。为了筹得这笔资金，NantHealth给投资者提供了5.5%的利率，而一般的可转换债券的回报率只有3.3%。

投资网站Motley Fool对他们的评价：“NantHealth不是合格的投资对象，支持它完全是一场投机。”

辉瑞制药-艾尔健

In late 2015, Patrick Soon-Shiong, part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and one of L.A.'s richest men, delayed the IPO of his company NantHealth. The company, which offers a mash-up of medical testing, payments processing, and medical infotech, eventually went public in June.

Perhaps it should have waited longer. Shares of NantHealth (nh) soared on their first day of trading to as high as $21, but have plummeted since. The stock is now down more than 50% from that peak, to around $10.50, making it one of the worst-performing IPOs of 2016. At the time of the IPO, Soon-Shiong crowed that his company was the first to match up genomic cancer testing with billing services. But it's not clear that enough hospitals or doctors are looking for those combined services. In the first nine months of 2016, NantHealth lost $124 million, up from a loss of $54 million in the same period in 2015.

And it appears the company, less than six months after its IPO, is already hurting for cash. In late December, NantHealth raised another $100 million in a convertible-bond offering. To do so, NantHealth had to offer a 5.5% interest rate to investors. The average convertible bond pays just 3.3%.

Investing website Motley Fool's bottom line: "NantHealth simply does not qualify as an investment; it's a pure speculation."

Pfizer-Allergan

这是一个“看我口型”的时刻。2015年11月，辉瑞制药（Pfizer）的首席执行官伊恩·瑞德宣布他们将收购艾尔健（Allergan）。他在声明中强调，尽管这笔1,600亿美元的收购会让辉瑞制药的官方总部迁至爱尔兰，但这并不是为了避免美国的税务。瑞德反复表示：“我要强调，我们这次交易并不是为了避税。”

好吧，既然他坚持这么说。不过2016年4月，就在美国财政部宣布新规，严格限制跨国交易带来的税务减免后的两天，辉瑞制药和艾尔健的交易就取消了。这次交易的取消也表明，瑞德并没有真正计划借此来提高公司利润，只是想避税而已。而投资者也因此受到连累：尽管辉瑞制药的股价在2016年末迎来了一次飙升，但也只是大概回到了交易取消时的水平。

诺德斯特姆-Trunk Club

It was a "read my lips" sort of moment. In November 2015, when Pfizer CEO Ian Read announced his company's deal to buy Allergan, he stressed that while the $160 billion acquisition would move Pfizer's official headquarters to Ireland, it was not about avoiding U.S. taxes. No, the Pfizer-Allergan combination was highly strategic. “I want to stress that we are not doing this transaction simply as a tax transaction," Read reiterated.

Oh well, if he insists. But in April, just two days after the Treasury Department announced new rules that would significantly limit the tax savings from cross-border deal, the Pfizer-Allergan deal was called off. The cancelation of the deal made it clear that Read didn't really have a vision for how to boost his company's profits other than by cutting taxes. And shareholders have suffered: Despite a late 2016 rally, shares of Pfizer (pfe) are stuck roughly where they were when the deal was called off.

Nordstrom-Trunk Club

11月时，诺德斯特姆（Nordstrom）承认自己犯了时尚的错误。这家高端百货公司宣布自己在Trunk Club上亏损了近2,000万美元，这是他们两年前收购这家在线购物服务公司所花资金的大约一半。当时，他们希望借此增加诺德斯特姆在网络上的影响力。不过在诺德斯特姆的指挥下，这项服务从未盈利。在诺德斯特姆收购Trunk Club后不久，后者就开始开设实体店面。事后看来，这是个明显的警示信号：他们的网络战略没有起到效果。希望诺德斯特姆下次在收购时能更好地做足功课。（财富中文网）

作者：Stephen Gandel

作者：严匡正

In November Nordstrom (jwn) admitted it had made a fashion faux pas. The high-end department store announced it was taking a nearly $200 million writedown on Trunk Club, about half of what it had paid for the online shopping service just two years earlier. The deal was meant to jumpstart Nordstrom's presence online. But under Nordstrom's command, the service has never made money. Shortly before Nordstrom bought the company, Trunk Club had started opening up its own physical stores. In hindsight, that should have been a pretty good warning sign that its online strategy wasn't working. Nordstrom will hopefully be a more diligent shopper next time.