Cross border deal activity ‘picking up’
NORTH West companies invested nearly £2bn in acquiring assets overseas, according to research.
Deloitte’s Cross Border Deals Radar reveals that nine deals – the largest being Amec’s £1.9bn acquisition of Foster Wheeler – took place during the first quarter of 2014, compared with five deals worth £60m in Q1 2013.
As well as Amec, which has significant operations in Knutsford and Warrington, other outbound transactions in the period included Brammer’s with its £27m acquisition of Scandinavian firm Lonne Holding; and the £5.6m takeover of Swedish Defence Consulting Group by Cumbria’s James Fisher & Sons.
From an in-bound perspective, there were 14 deals worth £325m, less the £538m seen in the first quarter of 2011, where the figures were boosted by the £385m takeover of Enterprise by Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial.
Key inbound transactions from Q1 2014 included Thomas Cook’s sale of Gold Medal to Dubai-based dnata for £45m, and Toshiba’s £102m investment in Cumbria-based nuclear business NuGeneration, in collaboration with US-based Westinghouse Electric Company.
Oliver Tebbutt, corporate finance director at Deloitte, said: “International M&A still remains high on the agenda for businesses within the UK and the latest figures show how the North West is a key hub for cross-border transactional activity.
“While outbound deal flow was dominated largely by the one big-ticket deal, inbound activity remained buoyant, with a number of sizeable deals still being made. In addition, half of overseas bidders are coming from North America, continuing a theme seen in 2013.”
