The Deal Announces Winners Of The Sixth Annual Most Admired Corporate Dealmaker Awards

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Deal, TheStreet's (NASDAQ:TST) institutional business, today announced the winners of the sixth annual Most Admired Corporate Dealmaker (MACD) Awards, which recognize the best corporate dealmaking teams at acquisitive, large-cap U.S. companies in ten industry groups. Each year, winners are selected from major S&P industry groups and through a survey of The Deal's audience. Voters determine which candidate in each industry excelled in overall M&A strategy based on the criteria of strategy, choice of targets, deal execution and team skill.

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"We understand the difficulty in dealmaking in good as well as tough times, so the Most Admired Corporate Dealmaker Awards were created to celebrate excellence in deals no matter the financial environment," said Jeffrey Kanige, Editor in Chief of The Deal. "We're thrilled to announce this year's winners and look forward to recognizing their achievements at the New York Stock Exchange next month."

The following companies were recognized and honored as winners:

Consumer Discretionary: Amazon.com Inc. for the technological innovation that drives its growth including purchase of app maker Evi Technologies, an electronic ink company from Samsung, streaming music service Songza and book recommendation site GoodReads.

Consumer Staples: The Coca-Cola Co. for investments that span the globe with one of its units buying a stake in Foster's brewery operations in Fiji and Samoa, and the company increasing its stake in a British smoothie company Innocent Drinks.

Energy: Kinder Morgan for positioning itself to capitalize on the resurgence of domestic energy production. The pipeline giant has invested approximately $22-billion to grow through joint ventures, expansions and acquisitions.

Finance: Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for finding value in a range of industries including media, manufacturing, financial services, energy and food.

Healthcare: Abbott Laboratories for working to deepen and broaden product lines with the $310-million purchase of stent maker IDEV Technologies.

Industrials: United Technologies Corp. for building its business through decades of acquisition with net sales of nearly $58-billion, helped by the $16.5-billion acquisition of Goodrich Corporation last year. Its acquisitive nature has paid off for investors, by building its separate business units into world-leading companies that deliver double-digit operating profit margins.

Information Technology: IBM Corp. for making tuck-in acquisitions that fine-tune its suite of product offerings. Those deals included a $2-billion purchase of cloud infrastructure company SoftLayer and several smaller deals.

Materials: PPG Industries for acquisitions that have helped it grow into a company with annual sales of more than $15-billion. PPG is now the largest coatings company worldwide, after a $1.05-billion deal to buy the architectural coatings business of AkzoNobel earlier this year.

Telecommunications: Verizon Communications Inc. for positioning itself as a telecommunications leader by strategically buying and selling wireless spectrum licenses. Most notably, Verizon agreed pay $130-billion to buy the US wireless business of Vodafone Group and managed to raise one of the largest ever financing packages at $60-billion.

Utilities: Duke Energy for expanding and refining operations following a $13.7-billion merger with Progress Energy last year. That acquisition helped Duke deliver a shareholder return of about 32%. It expanded into the Chilean market last year with two smaller acquisitions, and sold its fiber network operator DukeNet Communications to Time Warner Cable.

Winners will be recognized at an awards dinner in the historic Board Room of the New York Stock Exchange on the evening of December 4, 2013 during The Deal Economy: Predictions & Perspectives for 2014.

Learn more about the winner's in The Deal's news article here.

About the MACD Survey:
The MACD Award, now in its sixth year, relies on an industry peer voting process to determine which major U.S. dealmakers qualify as the best all-around dealmakers in their industries. This year, the list of nominated companies included 10 major S&P industry groups. Readers and users of The Deal's products and services were asked to identify outstanding candidates based on four criteria: overall strategy and choice of targets; execution and demonstrated skill of the deal team. The survey assesses corporate deal making effectiveness over the past five years of transaction history to give a more accurate picture of deal performance over time.

About The Deal
The Deal, a business unit of TheStreet, has been serving corporate dealmakers, advisers and institutional investors the most sophisticated analysis of the deal economy since 1999. Our transaction information service, The Deal Pipeline, is powered by a newsroom of senior journalists who offer proprietary research and reporting across M&A, bankruptcies, auctions and financings. It includes a breaking news service, First Take; daily and weekly sector newsletters; The Daily Deal, a 2x daily report of the day's top stories; a research center with over a decade's worth of intelligence and a database of over 100,000 deals; and an iPad app. Our marketing & media services group produces the industry's leading forecasting event, The Deal Economy, in addition to industry webcasts and integrated marketing programs. For more information, visit www.thedeal.com

CONTACT:
Emily Schneider
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SOURCE TheStreet, Inc.