why oil&gas / Energy & Power from an M&A Perspective

Can't speak much to oil & gas, but the power space is in roughly the 3rd inning of a complete industry overhaul. The past was monopolistic vertically integrated utilities controlling the space, from generation to transmission to distribution of energy. The future will have differentiated companies interacting in each of those aspects. On the generation side, you've got a flood of cheap natural gas displacing coal generation, increased environmental regulations furthering the displacement of coal, renewables competing in line or cheaper than existing generation at the wholesale level, and the increased interconnectedness of various power markets due to transmission buildouts and ISO expansions (see MISO/Entergy, SPP/Basin/WAPA, CASIO/PacNW). Transmission isn't changing all that much, although we are starting to see the first large scale buildout of new high voltage transmission lines in this country since the 70s to accomdate increased renewable penetration, and you are seeing merchant developers and owners of those same transmission assets. On the distribution side, retail energy prodivers continue to grow (although I'm not currently aware of any significant proposals to bring additional retail competition to new states) and things like distributed/rooftop solar, distributed/utility scale energy storage, demand response/load management technologies continue to grow and penetrate new markets. Correctly integrating these new technologies and optimizing capital structures across the various aspects of the industry will continue to challenge companies and bankers alike.