Global M&A hits first-half record

published 6 July 2018

Deal-making depends on confidence in boardrooms. With equity markets appearing to falter, and the US in danger of starting a global trade war, you might expect CEOs to be sitting on their hands. Yet the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) frenzy of the past few years just keeps going. In the first half of 2018, the value of global M&A reached $2.5trn, a 65% jump on the same period last year and a first-half record. The US media and telecoms sectors led the charge.

M&A has looked healthy all over the world, however, as Ben Dummett points out in The Wall Street Journal. Europe registered a 58% annual rise in dealmaking. Companies continue to seek out new sources of growth and cut costs despite the increasingly uncertain environment.

UK M&A, moreover, is looking especially sprightly despite "messy European Union divorce talks". The value of deals involving a British firm more than doubled to an 11-year high of $366bn in the first half. Cross-border tie-ups such as Comcast and 21st Century Fox bidding for Sky have hogged the limelight, but it's not just a case of foreign firms wanting to scoop up a bargain thanks to the weak pound. British domestic consolidation and cost-cutting are also key drivers. Our M&A scene, concludes Morgan Stanley's Colm Donlon, has been unexpectedly "robust".

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Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.