The global credit crunch has taken toll on the country's merger and acquisition (M&A) activities with the total announced deal volume slumping by 73 per cent to $5.4 billion in the first half of the year.
During the first half of 2009, there were just 55 M&A deals with an announced valuation of $5.4 billion, against 124 deals worth $20 billion in first half (H1) of 2008, according to the data compiled by deal tracking firm Venture Intelligence.
"There were no risk appetite among investors as liquidity crunch is causing financing problems as we saw in the Tata-Jaguar Land Rover deal," Venture Intelligence Founder Arun Natarajan said.
Besides, the total number of deals in the first six months of 2009 nearly halved to 136 from 296 transactions in the year-ago period.
The average deal value has also fallen from $162 million in the first half of 2008, to $98 million in 2009.
"The number of outbound deals have come down as demand for overseas expansion has fallen. There has been no deal so far in 2009 which involved a large financing, thereby lessing the average deal volume," Natarajan said.
Further, during the June quarter, there were 29 deals with an announced valuation of $2.7 billion, down 75 per cent from $11 billion garnered through 69 deals in June quarter of 2008.