Watch: A conversation on the 2024 economic forecast

The big picture: On Tuesday, December 12, Axios business editor Dan Primack and senior business and technology reporter Kia Kokalitcheva hosted virtual conversations during our final installment of this year's Dealmakers series exploring the market for deal activity across certain industries heading into 2024.

• Guests included Goldman Sachs co-head of Americas M&A Brian Haufrect and General Atlantic managing director and global head of life sciences Brett Zbar.

Brian Haufrect explained how today's current dealmaking environment has improved from the slowdown that lasted through some of 2023.

• "Overall, I would just say, we've gotten to a much, much better place in the current environment. I think as we watch the macro continuously improve throughout the year, we've just gotten in an environment that's much more conducive to M&A."

Brett Zbar shared why he believes 2024 is going to be a strong year to deploy capital.

• "So I actually think that 2024 is going to be an incredibly attractive year to deploy new capital. I mean, we've seen a lot of behaviors over the past few years that distorted the market, including private market valuations that weren't supported by fundamentals, and we're starting to see more companies either grow towards their valuation or find more opportunities to find an intersection on value with new investors, and that kind of investment regime is well-suited to long-term investors that are inclined to sit down with management teams and develop meaningful value creation plans."

Sponsored content:

In a View from the Top sponsored segment, Cooley partner Div Gupta explained which sectors led the IPO landscape in 2023.

• "In terms of IPOs, they were led by the health care, tech and consumer industries. The profiles of these companies seem to be varied, but the bar to going public seemed to be quite high. In some cases, there was a need for stability and profitability, particularly in the non-healthcare sectors, and in the health care sector and life sciences, there was a significant demand for IPOs in the I&I, that's the inflammation and immunology sector."

Thank you to Cooley for sponsoring this event.