Contact: Brenon Daly
Spending on tech, media and telecom (TMT) deals in May quadrupled from the same month in the past two years, continuing the record pace of M&A activity in 2014. Dealmakers around the globe spent $61bn on 308 acquisitions in the just-completed month, according to The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase. That pushes the total value of TMT transactions announced so far in 2014 above an astonishing quarter-trillion dollars.
Altogether, worldwide spending on M&A in 2014 has surged to $237bn – exactly matching the amount spent in the first five months of the previous high-water mark set back in 2007. Another way to look at the spending total so far in 2014: the amount is only slightly lower than spending in the same January-May period of the past three years combined.
As has been the case throughout 2014, deals in May came from across the tech lifecycle, with old-line industries consolidating as well as flashy young startups getting picked up at big prices. AT&T’s $48.5bn cash-and-stock purchase of DirecTV stands as the second-largest TMT transaction of the past 12 years. On the other side, Apple announced its largest-ever acquisition, paying $3bn for Beats Electronics, an eight-year-old provider of headphones and a streaming music service.
With five months of M&A now in the books, the annualized pace for M&A spending is running at about $560bn for full-year 2014. That is a full $100bn higher than the previous annual record for TMT deals, set back in 2006, according to the KnowledgeBase.
M&A activity
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Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase
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