40% Drop in M&A Deals in First Half

From DealBook blog, July 2, 2009:
The dearth of big takeover deals continues in the chilly M.&A. market. The first half of this year, which ended on Tuesday, marked the worst such period for global dealmaking since 2004, according to a new report from Thomson Reuters. The total volume of announced mergers and acquisitions worldwide fell 40 percent from last year to $941 billion, according to the report.
The Thomson Reuters report of a sharp decline in M.&A. activity followed a preliminary estimate by Dealogic last week, which showed that overall deal volume fell 36 percent worldwide in the first half. The two data providers differed somewhat in their methodologies for counting deals.
The biggest transaction of the first half was the drug giant Pfizer’s $68.1 billion acquisition of Wyeth followed by Rio Tinto’s $58 billion bid for rival mining company, BHP Billiton. The federal government comes in at No. 5 on Dealogic’s list of biggest deals with its $25 billion stake in Citigroup.
Private equity firms continued to be relatively silent in the first half with only $32.9 billion in announced global deals, the worst six month period of activity since 1997.
Link to Thompson Reuters report:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17014240/Thomson-Reuters-MA-Review
– Zachery Kouwe