LONDON/NEW YORK: Global dealmaking is entering an arid season as raging inflation and a stock market rout curb the appetite of many corporate boards to expand through acquisitions.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and fears that an economic recession is looming dealt a blow to merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the second quarter.
The value of announced deals dropped 25.5% year-on-year to $1 trillion, according to Dealogic data.
“Companies are standing back from M&A in the short term as they are more focused on the impact of a recession on their business. The timing for dealmaking will come but I don’t think it’s quite there yet,” said Alison Harding-Jones, Citigroup Inc’s EMEA M&A head.
M&A activity in the United States plunged 40% to $456 billion in the second quarter, while Asia Pacific was down 10%, Dealogic data showed.
Europe was the only region where dealmaking didn’t crash. Activity was up 6.5% in the quarter, largely driven by a frenzy of private equity deals, including a 58 billion euro ($61 billion) take-private bid by the Benetton family and US buyout fund Blackstone for Italian infrastructure group Atlantia .
Proceeds from global listings were down 84% to $33 billion in the second quarter, according to Dealogic, with only 274 companies attempting to raise cash via an initial public offering (IPO) compared to 852 in the same quarter last year.
“We are nervous about the back half of the year but transactions are still happening,” said Mark Shafir, global co-head of M&A at Citigroup.
The largest deal of the quarter was Broadcom Inc’s $61-billion cash-and-stock buyout of VMWare Inc in the United States.
Others included Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion and a move by India’s largest private lender HDFC Bank to buy out its biggest shareholder in a $40 billion deal to create a financial services titan to tap rising demand for credit.
With stock markets facing persistent turmoil, boardrooms are wary of making expensive bets.
“We are unlikely to see a large number of megadeals and buyouts getting done over the next couple of quarters. M&A is hard to do when companies are trading at a 52-week low,” said Marc Cooper, chief executive of US advisory firm Solomon Partners.
Comments
Comments are closed.