Welcome to a new year of Horizons, in which BDO M&A professionals around the world present their insights on mid-market deal activity and trends.
In this issue, we look back over 2021. After four continuous quarters of really strong deal activity, mid-market global deal-making took a slight dip in the final months of 2021, perhaps a well-deserved respite for practitioners. Judging by activity levels and capital deployed, 2021 was a year of huge recovery on COVID-impacted 2020 and well up on pre-pandemic 2019.
In the UK and Ireland, the report shows:
- Q4 2021 saw declines in both deal volume and value in mid-market M&A transactions in comparison to the previous quarter
- H2 2021 also saw declines in both value and volume compared to H1 2021
- H2 2021 still saw high levels of M&A activity, with deal value significantly higher than H2 2020 despite deal volume being lower
- Overall, 2021 saw deal values at record levels and significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels.
As a global organisation with operations in most countries, our teams have worked on over 2,000 M&A transactions in the past year and are able to tell us about this recovery in different sectors and regions. This issue brings you up to date commentary on deal activity levels and a special feature on the relevance of ESG in the world of M&A. We zoom in on TMT, Industrials and Logistics & Supply Management and, as always, we have a plethora of heat charts showing potential M&A activity in the next few months.
Download the full report for more information on markets across the globe.
Content adapted from BDO Global.