A December rebound in tech M&A

Contact: Brenon Daly

After three months of basically standing on the sidelines, tech dealmakers have stepped back into the market in a big way in December. During just the first week of the final month of 2011, the value of announced transactions across the globe hit $8.6bn, led by SAP’s announcement of the largest-ever SaaS deal with its $3.6bn purchase of SuccessFactors and Verizon’s mammoth $3.6bn reach for some excess wireless spectrum with its pickup of SpectrumCo.

To put that $8.6bn of deal value in December into context, consider this: it already equals the full-month total for September and is fully twice the amount of spending in November. But then, last month was particularly grim for M&A. In fact, spending in November sank to its lowest monthly level in more than two and a half years, which was the depths of the Great Recession. Further, the number of transactions in November (only 240) stands as the lowest of any month so far in 2011 and is roughly 20% below the typical monthly volume.