With the coronavirus pandemic (seemingly) winding down, many local companies are betting on post-COVID-19 growth with mergers and acquisitions, writes Joseph N. DiStefano for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Bala Cynwyd-based Hamilton Lane plans to invest $90 million on a “strategic partnership” with Russell Investments. Hamilton often uses Russell’s small-cap stock indexes to measure its private-equity clients’ results.

Meanwhile, Oaks-based SEI recently agreed to acquire Oranj, an investments-automation company.

According to James M. Meyer, chief investment officer at Conshohocken’s Tower Bridge Advisors, the number of these deals is rising as rates are still making borrowing so cheap that chief executives “make decisions they otherwise might not make.”

Investment banker Andrew T. Greenberg, co-owner of West Conshohocken-based GF Data, emphasized that it is not just big businesses that are buying or merging right now.

Smaller and midsized business mergers and acquisitions are also “extra intense right now,” he said.

However, Matt Topley, founder of King of Prussia-based Lansing Street Advisors, warns that this may not just be a short-term trend.

Corporations currently hold a record $2.5 trillion in cash and are looking to invest it, and all in all “we have a classic, ‘too much money chasing too few assets,’ until the music stops,” he said.

Read more about M&A and COVID-19 growth in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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