Which companies will be acquired before 2027?

The most important recent development is Brown-Forman’s July 13 announcement that CEO Lawson Whiting will retire, with the board opening a succession process and the company reiterating its fiscal 2027 outlook. That reads more like a continuity event than a sale process. If a transaction were imminent, I would expect the company to sound more defensive, more constrained, or more openly strategic about its capital structure; instead, management is framing the transition as orderly and business-as-usual.

The acquisition story is not coming out of nowhere. Brown-Forman confirmed discussions with Pernod Ricard in late March, and those talks ended in late April without agreement. Around the same period, reports also indicated that Sazerac made an approach that Brown-Forman rejected. So there is clearly third-party interest in the asset, and the brand portfolio is attractive enough that multiple buyers have looked. That said, the fact pattern so far is one of failed or rejected conversations, not one of a live deal process moving toward signing.

The biggest structural obstacle is Brown-Forman’s ownership. The Brown family controls the voting stock and the company itself says it believes remaining independent and family-controlled is in the best interests of stockholders. That makes any acquisition unusually hard unless the family is fully aligned on price, structure, and legacy considerations. With only about five and a half months left in the year, the market still has some optionality to reopen, but the burden of proof is high. I think the right framing is that Brown-Forman is a plausible M&A candidate in the abstract, yet a completed agreement before 2027 remains less likely than the current market price suggests.