Contact: Brenon Daly
Fittingly for a year that has seen an unprecedented number of blockbuster transactions, Dell’s $63.1bn reach for EMC pushed 2015 into record territory for recent spending on tech, media and telecom (TMT) transactions. According to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, acquirers around the globe have spent $475bn on TMT deals so far this year. That handily tops the previous full-year total of $420bn from 2007, which had marked the highest level of spending since the Internet bubble burst in 2000.
Overall, 2015 has seen two of the three largest TMT transactions recorded in the KnowledgeBase over the past 15 years. In addition to Dell’s planned purchase of EMC, this year also featured Charter Communications’ $56.7bn acquisition of Time Warner Cable in May. Other big prints in 2015 include Avago’s $37bn pickup of Broadcom in May (the semiconductor industry’s largest-ever consolidation) and $17bn deals from both Intel and Nokia.
So far in 2015 we’ve tallied 63 transactions valued at more than $1bn in the KnowledgeBase. That exactly matches the number of billion-dollar deals during the same period in the previous record year of 2007. However, there’s a lot more money attached to this year’s transactions. The median price for each of the big prints in 2015 is $2.5bn, compared with just $2bn for each deal in 2007. Skewed by these blockbuster TMT transactions, M&A spending is now tracking to about $600bn for the full year. That would shatter 2007’s previous record for spending by a full 40%.
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