The total first half of 2016 estimated transaction value in the CSE market was USS 14.1 billion, which is 14.3 percent lower than in the previous year, Romania occupying the fifth place among CSE countries. This drop is mainly due to less deals over USD 1 billion in this period. Although the overall transaction volume increased in the first half of 2016, the majority of the countries had decreased M&A activity in terms of the number of transactions.

There were 655 closed transactions in the first half of 2016. The Czech Republic was the most active country in terms of deal volume, followed by Turkey, Poland, Hungary. Romania had 56 transactions in the first half of 2016 (almost 30 percent less than the same period of last year).

„As opposed to the same period of last year, when Unicredit Triac Bank was the largest transaction in all the CSE countries, this year we’ve experienced a bit of a slowing down, with fewer megadeals. However, the growing interest and the number of ongoing transactions will reverse the descending trend,” says Florin Vasilica, leader of Transaction Advisory Services, EY Romania.

Germany, France and Poland were the most active investors in Romania, in H1 2016. The share of financial investors was the highest in Greece where financial investors were responsible for 40 percent of the market, followed by Hungary (39 percent) and Serbia (33 percent). In Romania, only 18 percent of investors were financial.

In Romania, the most active sector was manufacturing, while in the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria, it was the IT.

Although there were fewer foreign inbound deals compared to domestic deals, in terms of the origin of foreign capital invested in CSE by M&A transactions, US-based and Western European investors continued to lead against CSE countries in H1 2016. Germany, France and Poland were the most active investors in Romania in the first half.

EY‘s M&A Barometer is a summary and analysis of publicly disclosed information accumulated from various reputable databases. The data have been processed for the region of Central and South Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. M&A activities and data include closed deals. (source: business-review.eu)