The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market in Romania recorded a significant value in 2022, close to the record value of 2008, with the real estate sector, including construction, leading the ranking, said Radu Dumitrescu, coordinating partner Financial Consultancy, Deloitte Romania, according to Agerpres.
He presented, during a conference, the results of a study on the mergers and acquisitions market in Romania, which took into account the transactions announced during the year 2022, with values greater than 5 million euros and with traded shares of over 5%.
„For the year 2022, we are talking about 157 analyzed transactions, whose total value is between 6.5 and 7.5 billion euros. For a little more than a third of them, 38% of them, we identified values communicated in the media. We are talking about a total value of approximately 4.1 billion euros. This significant increase in 2022 compared not only to 2021, but to the entire previous period is the result of a greater number of transactions, but also of transactions with higher values, and I am referring here to the transactions whose value may have exceeded 100 million euros including, of course, the one billion euro transaction through which Romgaz acquired Exxon’s stake in the gas exploration perimeter,” Dumitrescu explained.
According to the study, the real estate sector was the most active on the local market of mergers and acquisitions in 2022, with almost 60 of the 157 transactions with values over 5 million euros recorded (36%) and with a value over 1.7 billion euros from the total estimated market of 6.5-7.5 billion (26%). From the point of view of the number of transactions, energy has a percentage of 11%, consumer products, technology and health each 10%. From the point of view of value, energy held 22%, industry 12%, automobiles and retail and distribution 7% each.
Among the types of investors that were active on the mergers and acquisitions market in Romania in 2022, the strategic ones continued to dominate, with 83% of the total number of transactions, followed by private equity firms (15%) and institutional investors and private ones, whose share dropped to 2% (compared to 20% in 2021).
The study points out that Romanian investors were involved in 30% of the total number of transactions in 2022, which had a total value of 1.9 billion euros.
Among the active foreign investors, those from the USA invested the highest amounts (1.4 billion euros – 37% of the market value), followed by the French (over 500 million euros), the Belgians (275 million euros ), Italians and Austrians (over 180 million euros each). Investors from Israel, Germany and Hungary have also been active on the local market since 2022, although in transactions of lower values.
