Key Contacts: Eoghan Doyle – Head of Corporate and M&A | Andrew Tzialli – Partner |
We are delighted to introduce the eighth edition of the Philip Lee LLP M&A Insights Guide produced by our Corporate and M&A team in association with Experian.
In this edition, we review deal activity across the full year of 2024, providing a comprehensive year in review, and consider the outlook for the year ahead. This guide has been created in partnership with Experian, a global data and technology company, using their comprehensive database of business and financial information which monitors and tracks the behaviour of businesses in the UK and Ireland. The insight is generated from processing over 60 million records a month, taken from over 600 of the latest and most up-to-date sources of UK and international business data. This data is trusted and used daily by over 35,000 organisations to inform their business decision making. The Experian database utilised for this guide holds more than 600,000 global M&A transactions, supported by data from more than 250 of the world’s foremost professional advisory firms.
2024 proved to be another very strong year for deal activity in Ireland. We witnessed record highs in terms of deal volumes (843 transactions in 2024, being an increase of 6% from 2023). Deal values held firm, with overall values increasing 3% when compared to 2023. Without doubt, the biggest story from 2024 was the role of private equity on transaction activity, where Ireland experienced an 87% increase in buyout volume, coupled with record values, reaching €20bn in 2024 (the highest level in a decade). From a sectoral standpoint, once again, technology was the strongest performer, representing roughly a quarter of all Irish deals. In terms of overseas bidders, the UK continued to lead the charge for Irish assets as the number one bidder.
The UK M&A market recovered from its downturn in 2023 resulting in 2024 being an active year for deal making. Whilst the year started slowly, Q3 and Q4 buoyancy (perhaps largely driven by prospective tax changes) was such that 2024 was the busiest year for deal making in terms of volume since 2018. There were 7,690 transactions in 2024, with a large percentage of those closing in October and later into the year. The US remained the leading inward investor in UK companies and for outward deals, 2024 saw 77 investments in Ireland and an increase in deals to both the US and the Netherlands.
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