New England sees M&A decline continue

NEW YORK – In contrast to the upward trend in mergers and acquisitions in the U.S., those types of deals have been declining in New England for three consecutive years, according to Mergermarket Group’s “ New England M&A Trend Report: 2013.”
According to the report,
New England finished 2013 with 243 deals worth $24.8 billion, the region’s lowest aggregate value since 2002, when $18.4 billion in M&A deals were reported.
In Rhode Island, 10 mergers and acquisitions with a total value of $509 million were announced in 2013, according to Mergermarket data.
“Even though we have Rhode Island data, we can’t draw meaningful conclusions based on such a small amount of activity,” Amanda Levin, Mergermarket’s editor of the Americas, told Providence Business News. “One large transaction can skew the numbers, so we can’t really determine a trend.”
The Rhode Island M&As were mostly in the consumer segment, such as retail and restaurants, she said.
While New England M&As were down, the Mergermarket study found substantial growth of M&A activity in the mid-Atlantic and West Coast regions, particularly in the overall technology, media and telecommunications sector.
In the bigger New England picture, some companies decided to forego the M&A route and chose the IPO path, which was a robust market last year and is expected to continue to be healthy in 2014, said Levin.