M&As touch $24bn in 10 months of 2006 Economic Times, Bangalore, November 4, 2006: It's raining deals, literally. India Inc has witnessed strategic M&A deals worth $23.7bn in the first ten months of '06, both within the country as well as overseas. In addition, private equity investments to the tune of $5.8bn have taken place in India this year so far, according to the latest dealtracker from Grant Thornton. Given that there are two more months left in '06, the strategic M&A figure could well exceed $25bn. This would mark a significant jump from the $16.2bn worth of deals announced in the whole of '05. India Inc's acquisition drive is being fuelled by global transactions with 147 outbound deals aggregating to $15.7bn. While the overall figure is skewed due to some big budget announcements over the last two months including the Tata-Corus and Videocon-Daewoo deals, the frenetic activity in deal street cannot be wished away. Says Harish HV, partner (Corporate Advisory Services) at Grant Thornton, "the Tata Corus deal would skew all numbers and comparisons. Such large size deals could happen only in the commodities space, but in general, people have been looking at larger deals. Though November is expected to be equally strong in terms of M&As, December could be slow as the holiday season sets in the West." While strategic M&As have been hogging the limelight with the growing deal sizes, the private equity space have been equally busy. In fact October itself recorded 27 PE deals aggregating more than $1.05bn, which amounts to 50% of the entire $2bn PE investment figure for '05. Providence Partners' $400-m investment in Idea Cellular was the largest private equity investment during the month. There have been a total of 380 strategic M&As announced in the first ten months of '06. Out of these, there were 209 cross border deals adding up to $20.4bn. Within cross border transactions, the number of outbound deals was 147 in the January-October period with a value of $15.7 billion. Back