S&P 500 Completed Acquisitions and Disposals Reported on 8-K

## What this measures

The number of original Form 8-K filings in the month by S&P 500 companies that report Item 2.01, "Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets": a company has closed the purchase or sale of a significant business or assets (generally 10% or more of its total assets).

## Why it matters

Large companies doing deals large enough to be significant to themselves is the big-ticket end of M&A, the deals that move industries.

## How to read it

Higher means more big-company deals closing. Counts are small, so read a trailing average or compare whole years.

## What it does not say

Item 2.01 covers sales as well as purchases, so one deal between two SEC registrants can appear twice (buyer and seller), and a divestiture counts like an acquisition. Only deals large enough to be significant to the filer are reported, so small companies report smaller deals than large ones, and the count says nothing about deal value. Private buyers and targets with no SEC filing obligation are invisible. Deal values are not extracted: they are in free text and exhibits and are not reliable enough to sum.

## How it's built

Palanor counts original Form 8-K filings (not 8-K/A amendments) that list the item, by filing date, one per accession: a filing made jointly by several registrants counts once. Items come from EDGAR's structured record of each filing (the submissions data), not from reading the text. History starts in September 2004, the first full month after the current 8-K items took effect on 23 August 2004; a daily job reads each new day's filings. A month is written once its last days are in. The S&P 500 version counts filings by companies inside the index on the filing date, using the same dated membership as Palanor's other S&P 500 aggregates: today's members for every date before 26 September 2026 (so companies that joined recently count in earlier years, and companies that left or were acquired do not), dated membership from then on.

## Source

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR Form 8-K filings: the item list on each filing from data.sec.gov submissions and EDGAR's bulk submissions file, with the EDGAR daily form indexes. Public domain: "Information presented on sec.gov is considered public information and may be copied or further distributed by users of the web site without the SEC's permission" (SEC website dissemination policy, sec.gov/about/privacy-information). Every counted filing is available, with its accession number, from the Palanor deals API.