Ashurst has published its annual review of the UK Public M&A market for 2016.
Overview
Deal volume
Of the deals we review (which excludes minority offers), 2016 saw the same level of UK public bid activity in terms of deal volume as compared to 2015 with 53 firm offers (in excess of £1m) having been announced. There were 26 firm offers for Main Market targets (a 19% reduction on the 32 Main Market bids in 2015), 24 firm bids for AIM targets (a 29% increase compared to 17 in 2015), and three bids for unlisted target companies.
Deal values
In a year of uncertainty, it is no surprise that deal values in the UK declined from £151.8bn in 2015 to just £67.14bn in 2016. The highest value bid of 2016 was SoftBank Group’s £24.4bn acquisition of ARM Holdings which contrasts with the £71bn combination of ABInBev and SABMiller in 2015.
26 (33) firm offers have had a deal value in excess of £100m of which only five (14) offers exceeded £1bn, a significant drop from 2015.
As with our previous Updates, the Overview provides an analysis of trends in the public M&A market in the UK during the year. Appendix 1 contains a summary of the key features of the firm offer announcements we have reviewed in 2016.
The Q4 2016 Digest summarises recent news and developments from the UK Takeover Panel including the introduction of checklists and supplementary forms for use in the preparation and submission of documentation during the course of a takeover.
