Despite a slowdown in the third quarter, the value of announced mergers and acquisitions (M&A) involving Chinese companies reached a record high of 477.2 billion U.S. dollars for the current year, surpassing last year’s volume, Thomson Reuters announced Wednesday.
Focus Media Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd. announced its plans to relist in China through a reserve merger (also known as backdoor listing) with Hedy Holdings in a deal valued at 9.1 billion U.S. dollars, after terminating its first attempt with Jiangsu Hongda New Material Co. Ltd.
The merger pushed the high technology sector to capture a majority of China’s deal-making activity with a 17.9-percent market share worth 85.3 billion U.S. dollars, up 143.4 percent over a year ago and the highest first nine months ever in terms of value for high-tech M&A involving China, the data provider reported.
In contrast, deals in the financial sector, which accounted for a majority of the market share last year, declined 15.4 percent in value to 62.2 billion U.S. dollars compared to 73.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first nine months of 2014, according to Thomson Reuters.
Outbound acquisitions by Chinese companies hit their highest level on record with 77.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of transactions, up 91.2 percent from the same period last year.
Industrial sector deals accounted for 21.7 percent of China’s outbound acquisitions in terms of value with 16.8 billion U.S. dollars, up 360.7 percent from the first nine months of 2014.
China’s overseas acquisitions in Europe witnessed a record high with 89.1 percent growth in value to 27.5 billion U.S. dollars compared to the first nine months of 2014 (14.6 billion U.S. dollars).
Foreign firms targeting Chinese companies remained almost unchanged with 33.8 billion U.S. dollars in mergers and acquisitions, a minimal increase of 0.5 percent in value from the first nine months of 2014.
The average disclosed M&A deal grew to 146.4 million U.S. dollars compared to 112.8 million U.S. dollars in the first nine months of 2014, as there were more transactions above 3 billion U.S. dollars involving Chinese companies this year, said Thomson Reuters.