April was a record month for M&A, no matter whose data you choose to read. Mergermarket, the financial news and data business, newly part of the Financial Times Group, calculates $482.6bn worth of M&A activity during the month, while Thomson puts the figure at a whopping $626.3bn.
So why the $150bn difference? Not exactly small change is it….
The lion’s share of the valuation gap this month - around $100bn - is accounted for by Thomson’s inclusion of the indicative proposal by the RBS/Santander/Fortis consortium to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro. Mergermarket only includes formally announced offers, while Thomson also includes deals that are at an earlier stage in the process.
But otherwise, all the big name deals are floating around both sets of league tables: Endesa’s takeover by Enel and Acciona, KKR’s buyout of First Data and Sacyr Vallehermoso’s offer for Eiffage just a few of the mega-transactions announced in April.
Whosever data you choose to follow - and you may well believe, sadly, that bigger is better - things have never been rosier for the global M&A juggernaut.
