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M&A at a Glance (June 2015)
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June 15, 2015 download PDF
Although the overall M&A market experienced mixed results in May 2015, U.S. M&A activity (measured by volume) showed great strength, increasing 54.0% to $245.07 billion, driven by marked strength in both strategic and sponsor-related volume. Global volume also increased, driven by a 70.3% rise in global sponsor-related volume, but only by 3.7% to $439.43 billion. Deal activity, however, as measured by the total number of global transactions, was down in May 2015; the total number of global transactions decreased 10.1% to 2,698 and the total number of U.S. transactions decreased 1.9% to 776. Figure 1.
Telecommunications was the most active U.S. target industry by volume in May 2015 ($92.16 billion), followed by Computers & Electronics ($49.28 billion) and Healthcare ($33.81 billion). Telecommunications volume rose primarily due to the Charter Communications/Time Warner Cable transaction. Healthcare continues to be the most active U.S. target industry by a wide margin for the last 12 months ($445.28 billion in deal volume with Computers & Electronics the next most active U.S. target industry at $213.50 billion in deal volume). Figure 2.
Both global and inbound U.S. crossborder activity retracted in May 2015 from their April gains. Global crossborder volume declined by 43.4% to $123.21 billion, as did inbound U.S. crossborder volume, which declined by 76.5% to $14.87 billion. The overall number of global and inbound U.S. crossborder deals declined by 7.9% and 9.2%, respectively, in May 2015. Figure 1.
With respect to inbound U.S. crossborder transactions, France
took the top position by deal volume ($7.86 billion), while Canada
maintained its top position for the highest number of deals
(34). Switzerland took top position for outbound U.S.
crossborder transactions with $48.43 billion in volume, while
Canada had the highest number of outbound U.S. crossborder
transactions (25). Figure 3.
The average target and reverse break fees in May 2015 were 3.8%
and 5.7%, respectively, such metrics being near to their respective
annualized averages. Figure 7. Finally, we note that
the incidence of hostile/unsolicited offers rose to 16.7% in May
2015, compared to 12.8% for the last 12 months. Figure
12.