‘Early-stage M&A activity’ in the UK rebounded by 53% in June, with Intralinks describing it as ‘a likely consequence’ of the Conservative election victory in May.
It has been only a moderately better year overall so far however as the rest of the year has not been as active as June. Early-stage activity is up by 4% year-to-date, lagging behind the 10% rise seen in Europe, Middle East and Africa region as a whole.
Early-stage M&A activity in France, Italy and Spain has been seemingly unaffected by the Greek debt crisis with numbers up more than 30% year-to-date, Intralinks said.
The company expects the number of M&A deal announcements globally to be 11% higher over the whole of 2015 than last year.
Should this come to pass 2015 would set a new record year for the number of global M&A deal announcements, ahead of 2007.
“2015 has seen a very strong start for global M&A markets,” said Philip Whitchelo, VP of strategy and product marketing. “Based on our insights into early-stage M&A activity, we are predicting double digit growth globally overall in the number of announced deals for 2015 compared to last year, and a new record year for M&A in 2015.”
“UK early-stage M&A activity appears to have recovered its momentum following the Conservative party’s victory in May’s general election,” Whitchelo added. “We could see a stronger second half of the year for UK M&A as deals that were slowed down or put on hold due to the election are accelerated.”
