Contact: Brenon Daly
Tech acquirers stayed busy in April, keeping 2015 on track for post-bubble records for both the number of transactions as well as the spending on them. The just-completed month saw 341 tech, media and telco (TMT) deals valued at $42.1bn announced around the globe, exactly matching the totals from April 2014, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. However, adding a little bit more perspective on the recent flurry of activity, we would note that the spending of some $42bn in both April 2015 and April 2014 is twice as high as the same month in 2013 and 2012 combined.
While M&A activity was strong across a number of sectors, the top end of the market was particularly active. Last month, 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase tallied nine transactions with an equity value of more than $1bn. Notable big prints included Nokia’s $16.5bn consolidation of telecom equipment rival Alcatel-Lucent; Informatica’s $5.3bn take-private, the largest leveraged buyout in nearly two years; and LinkedIn’s $1.5bn purchase of lynda.com, which is almost 10 times larger than any other deal the employment networking site has done.
With four months of 2015 already in the books, tech acquirers have spent $162bn on transactions. That’s more than they dropped on deals for all of 2009. More significantly, if we annualize activity so far this year, 2015 is on track for just shy of a half-trillion dollars of M&A consideration. That would handily top the previous record of roughly $420bn reached in both 2006 and 2007.
And, we would note that tech acquirers are telling us they plan to be active. In the just-completed M&A Leaders’ Survey from 451 Research and Morrison & Foerster, slightly more than six out of 10 tech dealmakers and investment bankers expect their pace of acquisitions to accelerate over the next half-year, the second-most-bullish response we’ve received in the seven editions of the survey. See our full report on the M&A Leaders’ Survey from 451 Research and Morrison & Foerster.
2015 monthly deal flow
|
Source: 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase
For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.