BY Richard Summerfield
Despite several significant headwinds, global M&A deal volume and value continued to rise in Q3 2024, according to S&P Global’s ‘Q3 2024 M&A Equity Offerings Market Report’.
According to the report, stock market volatility led to a fall of nearly 33 percent in the total value of equity issuance, to $65.63bn from second quarter levels and nearly 21 percent from the same period in 2023. But the number of global M&A announcements increased quarter over quarter for the second straight period (though the increase was slight, rising just 0.36 percent) - the first time this has happened since the third and fourth quarters of 2020. Furthermore, the total value of global M&A deals increased 29.1 percent year over year to $708.74bn in the third quarter.
On a year-over-year basis, global M&A announcements increased 7.3 percent, ending a period of 10-straight quarters of declining global announcements. Deal announcement in the Asia-Pacific region were one of the key drivers of Q3 improvements. Across Asia Pacific, the number of transactions increased to 2742, up 16.1 percent from the previous quarter and 17.3 percent from the same period in 2023. Likewise, the total value of the deals announced increased to $165.81bn, almost doubling the previous quarter’s total and a 37.7 percent increase year over year.
Europe produced some year-over-year growth with M&A announcements increasing 7.0 percent to 2846 and the total value increasing 8.8 percent to $130.89bn. But M&A activity in the region fell quarter over quarter, with the number of transactions dropping 6.1 percent and aggregate value 25.8 percent.
Globally, initial public offerings (IPOs) struggled across the first three quarters of the year, driven by economic volatility and the surfeit of elections across Europe. Global IPO activity picked up from the lows in the first half of 2024, but the pace slowed compared to previous years. The value of offerings rose to $23.32bn in the third quarter, an increase of nearly 22 percent from the second quarter of 2024, but was down 32 percent from the third quarter of 2023.
The number of IPO transactions increased worldwide to 326, up from 322 in the second quarter, but down from 387 in the third quarter of 2023. There were 946 transactions across the first three quarters of 2024, down from 1061 in the first nine months of 2023. The Asia-Pacific region did buck this trend to an extent, and India in particular was a relative hotbed of IPO activity, with the number of deals across the country up 32.3 percent year over year to 262 for the first nine months of 2024. Over the same period, the growth in total value has been smaller, however, up 12.7 percent year over year to $7.65bn.