New Delhi: Corporate India announced M&A deals worth $1,893 million in February 2018, registering a 40% increase in value terms over the year-ago period driven by big ticket transactions, says a report by Grant Thornton.
According to the assurance, tax and advisory firm, there were 40 M&A transactions worth $1,893 million in February, as compared to 32 such deals worth $1,354 million in the year-ago period.
This increase in M&A deal value in February was driven by big-ticket mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that saw four deals valued over $100 million contributing to 79% of the total M&A values.
In February, IT & ITeS sector led the deal activity accounting for 39% of total deal value driven by Birlasoft’s merger with KPIT Technologies. IT solutions sub-segment continued to attract investors’ attention as 50% of IT deal volumes were in this segment, the report said.
On a month-on-month basis, however, February M&A deals saw 84% decline in value terms, as four billion dollar deals were recorded in January this year, while no such transaction was announced in February.
The Grant Thornton report further noted that the first two months of this year saw 87 M&A deals worth $17,030 million, registering a nearly five-fold increase over last year, primarily on account of revived domestic deal activity, which saw over six-fold increase in deal values.
The year so far registered four deals in the billion-dollar category and seven deals valued over $100 million accounting for 95% of total M&A deal values.
Energy, telecom, banking & IT sectors dominated the deal activity in terms of deal values capturing 92%, while start-ups sector dominated the deal volumes with 25%.
“Closure of insolvency proceedings window for the initial set of companies identified under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Act and equity issuance for debt reduction will also continue the trend for M&A transactions,” said Pankaj Chopda, director at Grant Thornton India Llp.