Throughout our M&A series we have been analysing the M&A transactions from different regions across the globe and in our final instalment of the series we will provide an overview of Global M&A transactions.

The M&A world has endured and recovered by past economic crises, including recent traumas, such as the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000-2002 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Now, we can begin to look at what the future may hold for M&A as the world looks set to get back on its feet.  Let’s see how the M&A world starts to recover from the most recent trauma, the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Join us as we dissect the stats and visualise the true outcome of COVID-19 on M&A across some of the biggest business sectors in the world!

So, what are mergers and acquisitions?

Mergers refer to an agreement that unites two existing companies into one new company, where as an acquisition is a corporate action in which one company purchases most or all of another company’s shares to gain control of that company.

Transactions by Region

Whilst each region faired differently through the 2019-2020 period, it was most interesting to observe a disparity between the regions in regards to trends. The European and Asia/pacific regions showed a favouritism of quality of deals over sheer quantity. Conversely, the UK, North America and the Middle East and Africa reported declines in both the number and the value of deals. As each region suffered due to a global pandemic, it is interesting to note how different regions managed to regain control of their M& transactions.

2020 Winners and Losers

It was not surprising to note that the most popular sector, the winner of the year, was Technology, with 487.2% increase in the number of deals! This sublime increase mirrored the global impacts of the pandemic as there was a sudden necessity for technology in general as more of us stayed at home and firms took note! Some of the biggest Technology M&A deals include Facebook’s acquisition of Kustomer for $1Bn, AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx for $35Bn and NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm for £40Bn. However, the largest deal of the year was PetrolChina’s sale of Oil and Gas Pipeline assets for $49.1Bn USD

Conversely, although the pandemic fuelled the need for pharmaceutical innovation, this was not reflected in M&A deals. Fiercepharma.com mention that the industry’s slowdown could be due to 2019’s megadeals and the pandemic certainly did not help. However, there were still a few large deals made such as AstraZeneca’s $39 billion deal for Alexion Pharmaceutical and Gilead’s $21 billion acquisition of Immunomedics showed the appetite for deal making is still there. Thus, whilst it may seem like its all doom and gloom in the sector, there are some great opportunities for 2021. Furthermore, 2020 saw the lowest number and value of deals in a year since 2013.

2019 – 2020 M&A Overview

To conclude, it was an interesting year to say the least and whilst not all regions performed as expected, the trends pave the way for many opportunities coming into 2021-2022!

Thank you for keeping with us throughout this very interesting series, if you want to read our full M&A Transactions report, please click here.