Contact: Brenon Daly
Despite an ice-cold start to 2015, tech dealmakers came roaring back into the market in early spring, putting spending on tech deals in the just-completed Q1 only slightly behind last year’s record rate. In the first three months of 2015, the total value of deals in the tech, media and telecom (TMT) market around the globe hit $119bn. That’s the third-highest quarterly spending total since the recent recession ended, and puts 2015 nearly on track with the free-spending M&A levels from last year, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase.
At more than twice the average quarterly spending over the past half-decade, the Q1 total of $119bn comes in only a few big prints away from the $128bn we recorded in Q1 2014. (See our full report on Q1 2014 M&A.) Last year’s opening quarter stands as the highest quarterly spending level since 2002, and launched 2014 on its way to the most M&A money spent in a year since the Internet bubble popped in 2000. (See our full 2015 M&A Outlook .) And so far in 2015, there isn’t much of a drop-off from 2014. Annualized, the first three months of this year would put the total value of all TMT deals in 2015 solidly above $400bn – a level it has only breached three times in the past 13 years. (See our full report on Q1 2015 M&A.)
Recent quarterly deal flow
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Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase
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