Irish mergers and acquistions surge after a subdued 2020

Total value of Irish deals closed in the first half was €17.5bn and M&A worth €33.5bn was nnounced

Grit Young of EY Ireland has seen a pickup in deals in 2021

Jon Ihle

July 24 2021 02:30 AM

Merger and acquisition (M&A) involving Irish companies in the first half of the year exceeded dealmaking activity for all of 2020 as corporate transactions bounced back strongly, according to data compiled by EY.

It was a strong six months for investment in Irish companies with nearly 100 deals involving Irish acquisition targets registered in the first half of 2021.

The total value of Irish deals closed in that period was €17.5bn with nearly double that amount, €33.5bn, announced and pending completion.

The figures represent a significant increase in both volume and value for Irish M&A over 2020, when only 80 deals were completed in the entire year for a value of just €11.5bn.

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“There has been a strong focus on the technology, pharma, care homes and real estate sectors,” said Grit Young, M&A partner at EY Ireland.

“We also saw some large financial services transactions of loan portfolios during the period. Given Ireland’s strengths in tech and pharma, the focus on those sectors was actually less pronounced than what we observed in the global markets.”

Ireland has benefit from a surge in global dealmaking so far this year, which hit record highs in value terms in the first six months.

Global M&A hit an all-time high in the period with deals worth more than $2.6trn (€2.2trn).

The figure for the comparable period in 2020 was slightly less than a trillion.

But the performance wasn’t due only to distorted year-on-year comparisons due to the pandemic. Deals in 2021 are also far outpacing the five-year pre-pandemic average of $1.6trn, according to EY’s analysis.

The country originating the most deals was the United States, with $221bn in outbound transactions in H1 – three times the amount from the same six months in 2020. North America accounted for more than half of all global deals in aggregate.

Ireland was also a top country for outbound M&A, with $51bn in deals generated by purchasers located here.

“After recording peak numbers in the early months of 2021, SPAC activity has slowed recently, but the M&A momentum has continued pointing to a fundamentally strong market moving forward,” said EY’s Andrea Guerzoni.

"The recent increase in larger PE deals and examples of collaboration within PE firms point to deals getting off the ground with an open mind when it comes to financing solutions.”