this years best and worst deals says professor harry campbell deal professordec 22 2015its time once again to hand out grades to the years deals and deal makersit was an astounding year on all fronts as deal makers grew more aggressive and shareholder activism reached new heights the merger market is on track for a record 4 trillionplus year deal makers are no doubt celebrating but they may also want to reflect that in these heady days there were more than a few missteps and fsthrees a crowd in the pharmaceutical feeding frenzy this year more than 600 billion worth of deals the battle among mylan perrigo and teva stood out teva bid for mylan which bid for perrigo none of the deals panned out as mylan adopted a just say never strategy that drove teva to buy allergans generic drug business for 405 billion some shareholders said mylan did not fully explain the consequences of its move to the netherlands an accusation that may have hurt mylans bid for perrigo which was rejected by shareholders in any caseperrigo gets an a for a rare hostile contest won on the merits mylan gets an f for fighting unfairly and poor shareholder relations while teva gets an incomplete for failing to follow throughdumb activism this year shareholder activists again dominated and companies ran to do their bidding but there were troubling signs that the reign of activists was pushing companies into risky strategies dupont and dow each a target of activist hedge funds agreed to combine in a deal where they also immediately agreed to split up into three companies this risky bit of financial engineering promises 3 billion in savings but the markets were lukewarm as the stock of both companies rose then quickly fell below the announcement pricesoffice depot and staples meanwhile pushed by the activist hedge fund starboard value agreed to a 63 billion combination only to be later sued by the federal trade commission which sought to block the transaction starboard which orchestrated the move has fled to the lifeboats and has sold about half its holdings in office depotfor overly risky strategies these and other activist deals receive an f justin m king who quit the staples board in protest over a settlement deal with starboard wins this years first profile in courage awardits you not me the precipitous decline of valeant pharmaceuticals internationals stock price created hedge fund carnage and one of the more bizarre scenes of the year as william a ackman and his fund pershing square capital management held a fourhour conference call to defend valeant mr ackman should have listened to his public relations people as he created more confusion over whether or not he supported management driving the stock down further valeant stock has recovered somewhat but mr ackman a brilliant investor by any measure this year earns a c for a lack of consistencynondisclosure disclosure its not a takeover situation just yet but the questions over sumner redstones health have