M&A deals involving Indian cos jump to $7.7 bn in Sept quarter

The total value of merger and acquisition deals involving Indian companies rose to USD 7.7 billion in the September quarter from the year-ago period, according to global consultancy EY.
With cross-border transactions being a significant driver of the M&A (merger and acquisition) activity during the previous quarter, it reflects "increased business confidence of global players in the Indian economy and domestic companies", EY said today.
As many as 233 deals involving Indian companies with a cumulative deal value of USD 7.7 billion were disclosed in the three months ended September.
"While this represents an 18 per cent increase in terms of aggregate disclosed value (vs USD 6.5 billion in Q3 of 2014), the deal volume remained at the same levels (232 deals in Q3 2014).

"The technology sector continued to dominate the M&A sector tables in terms of volume, accounting for 36 deals, as companies remained focused on acquiring firms specialising in SMAC (social media, mobile, analytics and cloud) capabilities," EY said in a statement.
Amit Khandelwal, Partner and National Director (Transaction Advisory Services) at EY, said M&A activity on the domestic front, though subdued, is expected to pick up over the next few months as the economy continues to improve.

During the latest September quarter, there were 116 cross-border M&A deals with a cumulative disclosed value of USD 6.6 billion, accounting for 85 per cent of the total disclosed deal value.

The surge can be attributed to three outbound big-ticket transactions -- those worth USD 500 million and above -- and two in-bound deals totaling USD 3.6 billion.
"Of the top 10 deals of the quarter in terms of value, 50 per cent were outbound and drove the significant increase in value to USD 3.6 billion in Q3 of 2015 compared with USD 0.3 billion in Q1 and USD 0.5 billion in Q2 of 2015.
"These transactions marked an end to a prolonged absence of big-ticket out-bound transactions from the M&A activity in India since 2012," Khandelwal said.