According to the latest Mergermarket Global & Regional M&A Report for 3Q19, Australian outbound M&A surged in deal value by 80.7 per cent to $US26.04 billion ($38.66 billion), turning Australian into the largest outbound deal making market in APAC excluding Japan.
Meanwhile, China and Hong Kong, together the largest market in APAC, continued their lacklustre performance over the quarter generating $US57.2 billion across 281 deals.
“The US-China trade and tech war and persistent political instability in Hong Kong led YTD US investment into China and Hong Kong to decrease by 46.3 per cent in value to [$US5.2 billion] and 52.4 per cent in deal count vs last year,” the report noted.
US M&A has now fallen to its lowest quarterly value since 1Q16, down 32 per cent to $US262.9 billion. Asia was down 26.5 per cent y-o-y to $US417.2 billion and European markets were down 29.4 per cent y-o-y to $US573.5 billion.
“The slowdown in deal making spread to the US market in 3Q19, causing global M&A to drop 11.4 per cent YTD on last year to [$US2.49 trillion] (across 13,304 deals),” the report said.
“Activity was particularly subdued in the difficult to interpret third quarter of the year, when [$US622.2] billion worth of deals were struck globally, down 21.2 per cent on 3Q18 ($US789.7 billion) and with 1,164 fewer deals than last year.”
The US market, which had so far seemed immune to the global downward trend at play since the middle of last year, is starting to be impacted.
Globally, the largest deal in the quarter by value was the London Stock Exchange (LSE) $US27 billion acquisition of Refinitiv.
