Billionaire Gautam Adani on Sunday won the race to acquire Swiss cement major Holcim's stake in Ambuja Cements and its subsidiary ACC for $10.5 bn (around Rs 81,361 crore), including the open offers. The Adani family, through an offshore special-purpose vehicle, announced that it had entered into definitive agreements for the acquisition of Holcim Ltd's entire stake in two of India's leading cement companies -- Ambuja Cements and ACC -- the Adani group said in a statement. The group outbid Ultratech and JSW group to enter the cement industry and also emerge as the country's second-largest cement manufacturer, with 70 million tonnes of capacity annually.
HUL believes that post Covid, the awareness about health and wellbeing and selfcare, has exploded and there is a mindset change from health as absence of disease, to health as a part of lifestyle.
Companies planning merger and acquisition (M&A) will have to disclose the extent of "complementary linkages" among them and their impact on the market. This comes under the revised reporting requirements of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The changes will take effect on May 1. Entities may also have to provide market-facing data of the past five years with respect to their market size, the market share of the parties, and also that of the competitors, along with customers and suppliers.
The income tax department has allowed non-resident taxpayers not having PAN to file Form 10F manually till March 31, 2023, a move which would ease their compliance burden and enable them to claim lower TDS rate. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had in July made it mandatory for non-resident taxpayers to file Form 10F electronically to claim benefit of lower Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). However, taxpayers faced problems in electronic filing of the form as the income tax portal did not allow a taxpayer who does not have a Permanent Account Number (PAN) to file Form 10F.
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
However, the number of transactions declined to 76 in January-March this year from 110 in the year-ago quarter.
Mergers & acquisitions started off on a strong footing, hitting a four-year high at $30.3 billion in the first quarter of 2022, bucking the global trend where deal-making fell sharply, says a report. Deal activity grew by 5.6 per cent in value terms in January-March 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2021, making it the highest first-quarter period since 2018 when it was $31.1 billion. In volume terms, the M&A activity grew 29.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, making it the best-ever quarterly number, according to the M&A numbers collated by Refinitiv, an LSEG business, which is among the world's largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure. M&As involving domestic companies stood at $23.7 billion, down 8.3 per cent on year.
The Indian M&A figure is even more impressive over a 12 month period.
Three business houses are likely to be in the final race to strike a deal with Germany's Metro AG for investing in its India unit -- Metro Cash & Carry. Industry sources in the know named Reliance, Adani Group, and Thailand's conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) as potential frontrunners to acquire a partial or full stake in the Gurugram-headquartered Metro Cash & Carry, which has 31 stores and 5,000 direct employees. Around 20 companies, including strategic and private equity investors, were approached by the German chain, inviting them to bid for the Indian wholesale business, according to a source aware of the M&A developments.
'India is still a small market but whatever we do, we do it with full focus.'
The contraction in M&A activity in India contrasts sharply with the upbeat global picture, much of it led by a reviving US economy.
Albeit muted for most part of the year, Deal Street in India has clocked M&As worth $29 billion in 2014 and expects the size to get larger with transactions worth over $40 billion in the New Year.
India attracted an estimated $49 billion FDI in 2019, a 16 per cent increase from the $42 billion recorded in 2018.
Why does the world's fastest-growing major consumer of energy fail to attract investments in oil and gas? This is a question worth pondering after private sector conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) failed to close a $15-billion downstream asset deal with Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco. It's understandable if multi-billion dollar investments in oil and gas projects or deals involving state companies that need to traverse a complex bureaucracy at state and federal levels and the corridors of ministries unravel. However, Mukesh Ambani-run RIL, India's most successful energy company, is not typically known to fumble on closing deals (Ambani closed deals worth around Rs 2 trillion early last year in telecom and retail with blue chip investors).
In terms of number of deals as well, there was a significant slump as there were just 51 deals recorded in January 2013, down 53 per cent compared to January 2012 when 109 deals were recorded.
The domestic deal-making activities were hit by weak corporate governance and a huge liquidity crunch in 2019, while the global deals were also hard to come by due to various factors including uncertainties caused by the US-China trade war, which left many investors in a wait-and-watch mode.
Value of M&A deals made by India Inc this year will exceed its 2007 levels.
India Inc is likely to witness a continuing surge in merger and acquisition activities after a record number of M&A deals in the first half of 2006 -- aggregating to more than $25 billion.\n\n
The value of India-focused merger and acquisition (M&A) deals touched $39 billion in the first nine months of this year, a significant 31 per cent decline vis--vis the corresponding period last year, global deal tracking firm Dealogic says.
Private Equity investment in Q1, 2015 witnessed a year- on-year jump of 30 per cent to $2.6 billion.
In the corresponding period of the last year, there were 614 deals worth $ 27.7 billion.
After a strict lockdown impacting sales, India has returned to the growth path again, Anglo-Dutch FMCG major Unilever has said. The return of growth of India business, along with Brazil and continued recovery in China, helped the company's emerging markets clock a growth of 5.3 per cent in the September 2020 quarter.
Byju's, Flipkart, PharmEasy and CRED, among others, have taken the acquisition route to grow
The proposed $23-billion mega deal between Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN would be India's biggest-ever M&A deal. Let us now take a look at the 10 largest M&A transactions involving an Indian company until now
Dealmakers and advisors feel investors are shifting their focus to Asia Pacific, especially India, owing to geopolitical instability driven by events such as Brexit and protectionist trade wars.
Total foreign direct investment into India rose 2 per cent to the "highest ever" $83.57 billion in 2021-22 on account of various measures like policy reforms and ease of doing business taken by the government, the commerce and industry ministry said on Friday. Total FDI comprises equity inflows, reinvested earnings and other capital. In 2020-21, the inflow stood at $81.97 billion. It was $74.39 billion in 2019-20 and $62 billion in 2018-19. "India has recorded the highest ever annual FDI inflow of $83.57 billion in 2021-22," the ministry noted in a statement.
"It is very unlikely that we get an M&A opportunity in India as Indian entrepreneurs are doing very well and whatever expansion we are planning in India would be through greenfield projects," Lakshmi Mittal told journalists.
An additional criterion in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may require digital businesses to secure approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the anti-trust regulator. The government is set to introduce a minimum threshold "transaction value" of Rs 2,000 crore (around $250 million) for any deal as a criterion for notification to the anti-trust regulator if the entity being acquired has substantial operations in India. The new criterion is learnt to be part of the proposed amendments to the two-decade-old Competition law, which is expected to be tabled in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament.
The total volume of merger and acquisition deals with focus on India has almost halved so far this year to $2.7 billion against $5.3 billion last year, according to global deal tracking firm Dealogic.
Till September this year, corporate India has announced merger and acquisition deals worth $26.43 billion, which is around 0.8 per cent of the total global M&A kitty. Data compiled by deal tracking firm Dealogic shows there has been a slowdown in M&A activity across the world as all regions except Latin America reported decreasing deal volume.
The heightened activity level in the M&A landscape during 2018 is set to spill over to 2019 as deal fundamentals are expected to remain robust, says Mahesh Singhi.
On the volume side, the number of M&A and PE deals was 110 in July, 15 per cent lower from 130 in July 2018.
Domestic deals were the flavour of the month as there were 20 such transactions worth $2.77 billion in June 2015.
India accounted for a meagre 5.1 per cent of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals among emerging countries in the first nine months this year, the lowest in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations.
Mergers and acquisitions are set to become one of the most important trends of 2007 for India Inc, with the total deal value crossing $50-billion mark with one more month still to go. According to data compiled by international consultancy major Grant Thornton, India Inc recorded M&A deals worth $940 million in November, taking the total for first 11 months of 2007 to $50.79 billion.
Corporate India's merger and acquisition deal activity in February stood at $2.3 billion taking the total M&A kitty so far this year to over $5 billion.
Inbound M&A into India totals $9.86 billion this year, the highest in Asia.
The year saw 30 QIP deals raising over $5 billion and 35 IPOs.
Corporate India's shopping spree continued unabated in the second month of this year, as deals worth over $1.3 billion were announced, a five-fold jump from the year-ago period, a report by global consultancy firm Grant Thornton said.
