Survey: M&A volume at bottom, will improve in 2nd half of '08

July 22 - Baltimore Business Journal - Middle market mergers and acquisitions professionals are frustrated with the current M&A environment. But they believe the volume of deals has bottomed out and are optimistic about the second half of 2008, according to a report released Tuesday.

In its twice-yearly survey, the Association for Corporate Growth and Thomson Reuters reported that only 43 percent of middle market M&A dealmakers believe the current M&A environment is good. That's down significantly from a year ago, when the figure was 93 percent.

Nearly half of the more than 500 investment bankers, private equity professionals, corporate development executives, lawyers, accountants and business consultants polled say the greatest obstacle to M&A activity is the weak economy, the report said. Read More.

India looks attractive despite global M&A fall: Accenture

July 21 - MoneyControl.com - According to a study by Accenture Ireland, the M&A activity has fallen off significantly. But India has managed to sail through despite the global fall. CNBC-TV18's Shreen Bhan spoke exclusively to corporate honchos from India Inc and from Accenture.

According to Peter Smyth, Lead, Accenture Ireland, there has been quite a significant fall off in the level of merger and acquistion activity. The Q1 stats for 2008 have seen a 24% drop in the value of M&A Activity, he said."We saw a fall in March 2008 of 40%, so the trend is getting much steeper," Smyth said. Read More.

U.S. Companies Eye Growth Overseas as Economic Uncertainty Lingers at Home

HSBC reports findings of inaugural survey of under-researched market segment, representing nearly $6 trillion in sales and employing 32 million -- Two-thirds (67%) of senior executives say sales abroad to grow faster than U.S. -- Nearly half (49%) intend to raise international sales targets

July 16 - MarketWatch - HSBC Bank USA, N.A. announced today the result of an inaugural survey of U.S. middle-market companies, a vital yet under-researched segment of the U.S. economy. The HSBC poll which, queried 500 senior financial executives from companies with annual sales between $20 million and $5 billion, focused on the opportunities and challenges they face when expanding into markets overseas. Read More.

Private equity businesses outperform public: study

July 9 - Reuters - Private-equity owned businesses outperform publicly owned companies in terms of earnings and valuation, a study by accounting firm Ernst & Young said on Tuesday.

The study looked at buyout firms' "exits" from the businesses they owned in 2007. Private equity firms typically hold companies for five to seven years before exiting via either a sale or an initial public offering.

Ernst & Young said the annual growth rate in enterprise value for the 100 largest global companies from which private equity exited last year was 24 percent, double the rate of public counterparts. Read More.

Survey: most U.S. and Canadian oil execs foresee increase in M&A activity

June 23 - The Canadian Press - Merger and acquisition activity is expected to heat up across oilpatch, a survey by a Calgary law firm suggests.

Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP asked 100 executives and financial advisers in the oil and gas industry about trends they expect to see over the next year. The survey suggests 60 per cent of U.S. and Canadian respondents expect the total volume of merger and acquisitions to increase.

The sentiment was stronger among Canadians surveyed, with 70 per cent saying they agreed with that view. Read More.

Middle-market firms pack punch, study shows

June 23 - Indianapolis Business Journal - Mid-sized companies are a lot like middle children in a family, a new Indiana Chamber of Commerce study has found. They tend to achieve a lot, but don't get the attention they deserve.

The businesses amount to only 3 percent of all businesses in the state, yet generate 30 percent of the jobs and more than 40 percent of the sales, the study found. Indiana has 3,789 companies fitting the mid-size description of $5 million to $100 million in annual sales.

The Chamber believes it can boost their prospects by spotlighting the enormous role they quietly play in the state's economy.

"We wanted to determine what we could do to focus light on these companies," said Chamber Senior Vice President Mark Lawrance. Read More.

Research shows 2008 may be the best year for M&A

June 17 - Innovatives Report (Germany) - Results from the latest stage the of ongoing Towers Perrin/Cass Business School research looking at the value created in the last three global M&A cycles reveals that, contrary to received wisdom, 2008 may be the best time to do a deal.

This most recent part of the study looked at the performance of companies before and after peak years of the cycles. Together with Towers Perrin, Scott Moeller, Professor of Mergers and Acquisitions at Cass, examined the two prior merger waves and found the post-peak years (1990 and 2000) delivered higher shareholder value compared with deals in the frenzy of the M&A booms. This was true for all deals, although the research focused on those between $400 million and $1.5 billion in size (adjusted for inflation).

Combining the two waves gives a clear and statistically significant picture of performance in pre-peak, peak and post-peak years. The post peak years show the performance outperformed the MSCI World Index by 5.4% on average over the two periods. Read More.

Credit crisis may spark more M&As in China

June 6 - China Daily - The global credit crisis could actually increase the volume of M&A deals in Asia's financial sector and China is likely to be the most active area this year, according to a recent report.

The findings are based on a survey of 281 senior executives working in Asian financial institutions. The Economist Intelligence Unit, on behalf of PricewaterhouseCoopers, conducted the survey in March 2008, marking PwC's third report on financial services M&A.

According to the findings, although the credit crunch has led to market volatility and put a halt on larger financial service deals in the first quarter of 2008 throughout Asia, 44 percent of respondents believed that the credit crisis could actually increase the volume of M&A deals in Asia. Read More.

Despite the Sluggish Economy, Study Finds Optimism Among Middle-Market Companies in Midwest

April 30 - WWJ (Mich.) - The economic news for the Midwest and the nation has not been good. But a report out today from Plante & Moran PLLC, a Southfield-based accounting firm, found a lot of optimism among executives of medium-sized companies in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

The survey, which took the pulse of senior executives at middle-market companies in those states, found that more than two thirds are very or somewhat optimistic about the future growth and success of their organizations. A similar survey done in 2006 found that 55.9 percent of respondents felt that way then.

“Probably the most significant surprise in the survey was the level of optimism in middle-market businesses,” said Plante & Moran Managing Partner Bill Hermann.Hermann said that optimism comes, in part, from the nature of medium-sized businesses. Middle market companies – those with revenue of about $5 million to $500 million – often have levels of flexibility and growth potential that larger corporations can't match, he said. Read More. (Read complete report)

M&A funding remains in place despite credit crunch

April 22 - Financial News (U.S.) - Financing terms for the majority of mergers and acquisitions in the US have remained unchanged despite the onset of the global credit crunch last year, which severely dented the lending capacity of many banks.

According to a survey on M&A trends in the US, commissioned by law firm Nixon Peabody, 61% of respondents said they had experienced no revisions to the terms on offer to them despite the credit crunch.

The survey of 104 corporate executive and private equity practitioners found that banks have not been walking away from financing commitments given to companies and buyout firms that have been involved in deal making in the last year. Read More.

Global technology M&A market proving resilient

April 22 - MarketWatch - PricewaterhouseCoopers said Monday that while the headlines are dominated by the negative implications of the global credit crunch, the global technology merger and acquisition market is proving to be a very resilient beast.

The first quarter of 2008 has already seen numerous landmark deals announced, including the pending bid for Yahoo by Microsoft, and in the U.K. the $1 billion leveraged buy-out of Northgate Information Solutions by KKR and the recently announced GBP190 million recommended offer by 3i for Civica, PwC said.

Current activity levels and deal pipelines suggest that strategic and transformational deals are still very much on the boardroom agenda of technology companies, and the demise of the LBO has been overplayed in the technology sector. Read More.

M&A Business in Trough, To Rebound Next Year, Says Brunswick Study

April 2 - The Earth Times - A slight majority of leading M&A advisers polled believe that the economy is fundamentally sound and the merger business will pick up in one year to 18 months, according to a new survey by Brunswick Group LLC.

The survey polled leading bankers and lawyers in the U.S. to gauge the impact of the current downturn but did not poll private equity firms or corporate acquirers. The results were announced on the eve of the 20th Annual Tulane Law School Corporate Law Institute, the leading M&A conference that hosts the nation’s top deal lawyers, Delaware judges, bankers and other market participants to discuss the latest trends.

Fifty-two percent of those polled believe the M&A market is in a trough that will turn by mid 2008, and another 41% agreed with the more bearish statement, “We are moving into a recession – it will take up to five years to return to the level of M&A activity we saw in 2007.” A small minority of diehard optimists, 7%, regard the dip as “a short-term blip – less than a year.” Read More.

Asia's private equity investors opt for China and India: survey

December 10 - M&C.com - Private equity investors in Asia regard China as the market of choice followed by India, a KPMG survey said on Monday.

Sixty-one per cent of the respondents to this year's survey of 119 private equity firms said they have assets in China while 37 per cent have assets in India.

Third were Australia and Singapore, with 29 per cent, Taiwan with 28 per cent and Japan with 21 per cent. Read More.

M&A deals still overlooking IT integration challenge – study

Research finds no integration within three months of deal completion

The IT integration challenge posed when organisations merge is still being overlooked in many instances of merger or acquisitions, according to research among the membership of the National Computing Centre.

The research found that half of respondents who had worked in the context of a newly merged organisation reported there had been no integration within three months, when the deadline for the merged entity to disclose consolidated financial information comes into effect. Read More.

Climate change inspires thoughts of M&A

November 28 - Financial News (U.S.) - Climate-change concerns may set off a wave of mergers as a survey found that 20% of companies have considered buying a business to cope with the greater focus on alternative energy.

UK law firm Clifford Chance surveyed over 100 top executives at mostly multinational companies based in the US, UK, Europe and Asia about climate change issues.

The survey found that 44% of the Asian companies had considered buying another business, in areas like wind farms. About 19% of companies in the US and UK had made similar plans, along with about 13% of the companies in mainland Europe. Read More.

Private equity vital to mid-market firms, says survey

October 19 - Gowth Business - Over half of buy-out companies say that their private equity backers add significant value to their business, according to a survey from law firm Eversheds. Just under two-thirds of respondents had achieved their business objectives, with half of these outperforming their plans.

At odds with recent criticism of private equity firms, headcounts in three-fifths of the buy-out companies had gone up, with 18 per cent losing staff and 22 per cent remaining unchanged.

Richard Moulton, corporate partner at Eversheds, comments: ‘In the mid-market sector we are not dealing with Gordon Gekkos. The vast majority of private equity houses provide a supportive partnership which enables management to achieve their goals.’ Read More.

CEN Survey Shows Middle Market Companies Bullish on Economic Growth

Chief Executive Network Surveys Manufacturing, Distribution and Service Sector CEOs

October 2 - Business Wire - Chief Executive Network, the premier industry sector organization for CEOs and senior executives, recently surveyed over 350 companies covering a broad cross-section of the industrial and service sectors. The purpose of the survey was to determine how mid market (non Fortune 500) and smaller companies see their near term business prospects. Read More.

U.S. Middle Market Companies Confident about Business Growth in Year Ahead Despite Concerns about Slowing Economy

July 30 - Business Wire - Sixty-four percent of U.S. middle market companies, with revenues between $25 million and $1 billion, are predicting growth over the next 12 months, even though nearly 60% believe the U.S. economy will slow down, according to a new study from the Economist Intelligence Unit and CIT Group Inc., a leading global commercial and consumer finance company. Respondents also indicated that a "shortage of talented staff" and high "labor costs" were the top two challenges to achieving this growth.

The study, "Perspectives from America's Economic Engine: The CIT U.S. Middle Market Outlook 2007," surveyed more than 500 senior financial decision-makers at companies with revenues between $25 million and $1 billion. According to the most recent U.S. Census, the middle market accounts for more than $6 trillion in sales and employs almost 32 million Americans, which is more than twice the revenues and four times the number of employees of the blue-chip companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Read More.