We suppose you could file this under the West is wilting meme, though it’s really more a situation of East catching up again.
Either way, we’ve been picking through parts of the Reuters Q3 M&A overview, and emerging markets dealmaking has climbed impressively as a share of the global amount (emphasis ours):
The value of worldwide M&A totaled US$1.75 trillion during the first nine months of 2010, a 21% increase from comparable 2009 levels and the strongest nine month period for M&A since 2008. By number of deals, M&A activity is up 3.8% compared to last year with over 29,000 announced deals. Third quarter M&A activity increased 21% over the second quarter of 2010, to US$676.9 billion, the largest quarter for worldwide M&A since the third quarter of 2008. …
Mergers and acquisitions involving companies located in the emerging markets totaled US$480.7 billion during the first nine months of 2010, a 62.9% increase over the first nine months of 2009. For the three quarters of 2010, emerging markets M&A accounted for 27.4% of worldwide M&A volume compared to 21% during the comparable period in 2009. Cross Border M&A activity totaled US$723.0 billion during the first nine months of 2010, accounting for 41.2% of overall M&A volume, compared to 26.1% last year at this time.
Latin America’s two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, each recorded big gains in the first three quarters, as did the Middle East and South Asia regions. But China, with $85bn in M&A volume this year, remains the biggest EM target.
The global scorecard, if you fancy the details:
And here is something a lot of people are monitoring with interest: China cross-border activity. Outbound M&A declined significantly in the third quarter, though it still accounts for a majority of cross-border dealmaking this year.
China cross-border activity amounted to US$55.5 billion, a 17.8% rise from the US$47.1 billion recorded in the same period in 2009. Outbound activity reached US$35.8 billion, with US$13.3 billion being invested in the Energy & Power industry. Inbound activity totaled US$19.7 billion.
And in a separate report we found the next two charts, which illustrate the growth of EM dealmaking relative to the developed world in the last few years. First is a chart showing just emerging markets M&A since 2000:
And as a portion of global M&A for the last half-decade:
Moving (back) up in the world.
Related links:
Q3 M&A overview – Reuters
As the West wilts… – FT Alphaville
FT Tilt – a new EM service from the AV team