M&As lose steam, fall 70 per cent

With Tata Motors' acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford Motor for $2.3 billion, India's cross-border acquisition reached $4.9 billion in the current calendar year.

However, the outbound deal size came down by 37 per cent compared with $7.8 billion in the same period last year. 

Company	Target firm	Deal size
Tata Motors	JLR	$2.3 billion
Tata Chemicals	General Chem	$1 billion
Siva Ventures	Ugland Shipping	$302.4 million
Indiabulls Real Estate	Dev Property	$255.6 million
Sona Koyo	Thyssenkrupp	$145.8 million
India Value Fund	Dongseo Industrial	$103.5 million

Accroding to data by Thomson Financial, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) slowed down in the current calendar year with India's inbound and outbound deals at $8.594 billion, down 70.2 per cent from $28.805 billion in the same period in 2007.

With the correction in equity prices over the US subprime crisis and derivative losses by Indian companies, the inbound deals fell by 82.5 per cent in 2008 to $3.71 billion from $21.004 billion in the same period last year.

The inbound and outbound deals at $8.594 billion is 15.5 per cent compared with the $55.403 billion total deal size during the calendar year 2007. The outbound deals are 21.9 per cent of the total outbound deals of $22.492 billion in 2007, while inbound deals are 11.2 per cent of the total inbound deals of $32.911 billion in 2007.

The Jaguar-Tata Motor deal is the top cross border acquisiton by India so far this year and ranks fourth largest on record.

Tata Chemicals, another Tata affiliate, acquisition of General Chemical Industrial worth $1 billion ranked second this year.

The four other cross boarder deals by the Indian companies includes JB Ugland Shipping of Norway by Siva Ventures for $302.4 million, Dev Property Development of the United Kingdom by Indiabulls Real Estate for $255.6 million, Thyssenkrupp of Germany by Sona Koyo Steering Systems for $145.8 million and Dongseo Industrial of South Korea by India Value Fund for $103.5 million.