São Paulo – In the first half of this year, there were 32 mergers and acquisitions in the Brazilian business services sector, of which 21 involved foreign capital. The information was culled from the KPMG Merger & Acquisition Survey, according to which M&A operations were up 50% from the same period of last year, when 21 transactions of the type were carried out.
The number of deals is an all-time high for the period, and higher than in all of 2010, when there were 30 mergers and acquisitions in the sector.
According to KPMG, nearly two-thirds of operations involved primarily foreign-capital companies acquiring Brazilian-owned and based companies. Only eight transactions involved strictly domestic companies. Another two deals involved Brazilian capital companies buying foreign-based companies from foreigners, and one consisted of a foreign company buying a Brazilian-based company from foreigners.
“In the first half of last year, the share of foreign companies in the buying end of mergers and acquisitions was already strong, with eight out of 21 transactions. However, deals in which Brazilian companies were buying were the majority, at 13 operations. In these first six months of 2012, foreigners gained momentum in this type of deal, with 22 transactions, as against 10 involving Brazilians,” says Luis Motta, KPMG’s Merger and Acquisition partner in Brazil and the person in charge of the survey.
The KPMG survey considers merger and acquisition operations announced and completed between January 1st and June 30th. The survey was first conducted in 1994. KPMG is a worldwide network of independent companies which provide professional auditing, tax and advisory services. The company is present in 152 countries. In Brazil, KMPG has 4,000 professionals operating out of 20 cities.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
