Freehills 2011 Public Mergers & Acquisitions Report

Freehills’ third annual report on public transactions investigates how M&A participants structured their deals during a heightened period of activity. The report also compares data from previous years and reflects on the developing trends in deal mechanics that have emerged over the last few financial years.

Key findings of the report include:

• Public M&A activity has returned to pre-2008 levels.
• Booming success rates with over 70 per cent of deals being successful: this is well up on the previous two financial years.
• For the first time since the GFC, the resource sector accounted for less than half of overall public M&A activity. This is a strong sign of market recovery as activity across a broader range of sectors improves, but also demonstrates how fundamental the energy and resources sectors were to public M&A in Australia during the GFC.
• The trend for more friendly deals continued. Although there were fewer hostile deals, significantly more hostile deals were successfully completed.
• In FY2011, there was an overall trend towards more conditionality, reversing the trend seen last year.
• Deals launched by Chinese and Indian bidders enjoyed higher success rates, pointing to an increased sophistication in the way Chinese and Indian bidders approach the Australian public M&A market.

More information

For a copy of the Freehills 2011 Public Mergers & Acquisitions Report, please contact partner Simon Reed (Direct +61 8 9211 7797 or simon.reed@freehills.com) or senior associate Mark Tyler (Direct +61 8 9211 7232 or mark.tyler@freehills.com).