Global technology M&A's down 43% to US$33.4b

The industry outpaced deal value for all industries in the first quarter of 2012 but fell behind in the second quarter.

According to Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update: April-June 2012, global technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal value slowed to US$33.4b of aggregate deal value in the second quarter of 2012, down 43% year-over-year (YOY).

Resurgent macroeconomic uncertainty worldwide caught up with the technology industry, which had outpaced deal value for all industries in the first quarter of 2012 but fell behind in the second quarter.

Sequentially, 2Q12 aggregate deal value increased 33% from US$25.1b in 1Q12; however, as the report highlights the first quarter is historically the lowest-value quarter for technology deals. Cross-border (CB) technology deals showed a sharp increase in 2Q12. CB aggregate deal value surged 58% sequentially to US$17.4b and represented 52% of all global disclosed value for the quarter (compared with 44% in both 1Q12 and 4Q11). Europe, Japan and Canada all saw substantial growth in CB transaction value, while US CB deal value declined 54% sequentially, to US$4.1b in 2Q12.

Joe Steger, Global Technology Industry Transaction Advisory Services Leader at Ernst & Young, says: “There were several surprises in the second quarter, with US buyers ‘sitting out’ a sequential increase in transaction value that was driven out of Europe, Canada and Japan. But despite macroeconomic uncertainty that just won’t go away, we continue to see spreading strength from the disruptive megatrends of ‘social mobile cloud’ and big data analytics, which drive strategic transactions and enable innovation throughout the global economy.”

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia