PODCAST: M&A king Terry Kawaja talks about Snapchat and tells us why Europe is such a terrible place to do tech deals

pulse

July 3, 2017 12:53 PM

Business Insider caught up with Terry at the Cannes Lions where he talked to us about Snapchat, Sprinklr, and the upcoming Appnexus IPO.

Terry Kawaja

LUMA has advised on deals such as Oracle's acquisition of Moat, Time's acquisition of Adelphic, News Corp's acquisition of Unruly and AOL's acquisition of Millennial Media. LUMA was also an underwriter of the Snapchat IPO.

To sum that up, Terry Kawaja seems to know everyone in media and tech, and everyone in media and tech certainly knows Terry Kawaja. You have probably seen one of Terry's LUMAscapes - those impossibly complicated maps of all the important companies in tech, social media, online advertising, and web publishing.

Business Insider caught up with Terry at the Cannes Lions in the South of France where he told us what he sees in the future of media and tech. We talked about Snapchat, Sprinklr, the upcoming Appnexus IPO, and whether it's a good idea for cable companies like Verizon to buy media companies like Yahoo and AOL. He also told us why he thinks Europe and the UK are terrible places to do deals. (To listen, hit the play button on the SoundCloud player above↑)

Our conversation took place as we sat in the sunshine on the patio of the Majestic Hotel in Cannes — the epicentre of adtech gossip. You can hear people behind us drinking and having fun and doing deals.

The first thing I wanted to ask Terry about was a map he published of company yachts harboured at the dockside in Cannes. Last year there were about 30 yachts hosting parties for tech companies and since then about 10 of them have seen exits — buyouts, acquisitions or IPOs. So I wanted to know, is hiring a party yacht in Cannes really a good indicator of when a company might be about to exit?

Music credit: .

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