DealLawyers.com Blog

August 19, 2015

Key M&A Trends: Overseas Expansion Going Mainstream

Here’s something that Randi Morrison blogged on TheCorporateCounsel.net a few days ago: Recently, Deloitte released 2015 M&A Trends Report reveals a booming, wide-reaching M&A environment spanning small, mid-sized and large public and private companies and private equity firms, multiple industry sectors, and domestic and overseas markets. The report reflects the results of an early 2015 survey of more than 2,000 public and private companies and over 400 private equity firms.

Noteworthy findings include:

– Strong interest in overseas expansion. Among private equity respondents, 85% indicated that their deals involve acquiring a company domiciled in a foreign market – up from 73% last year. And 74% of the corporates are investing overseas – up from 59% last year.
– 39% of corporates expect to tap into the robust M&A environment to pursue divestitures – up almost 25% from last year.
– 85% of corporates anticipate acceleration of – or at least sustaining – last year’s M&A pace; only 6% expect deal-making activity to decrease.
– 94% of private equity firms forecast average to very high deal activity – up from 89% last year.
– Private equity firms anticipate ramping up both add-on acquisitions and portfolio exits.

Note that global M&A value in the first half of this year reportedly hit an 8-year high – second only to the all-time record set in 2007.

Deloitte’s report also notes that the vast majority of corporate and private equity respondents said that their deals fell short of financial expectations. See our earlier blog on tips to achieve post-merger integration success.