U.S. M&A activity increased in September

U.S. M&A deal activity increased in September, going up by 9.8% with 933 announcements compared to 850 in August. However, aggregate M&A spending decreased. In September 17.4% less was spent on deals compared to August.

Over the past 3 months, the sectors that have seen the biggest increases in M&A deal activity, relative to the same three month period one year ago, have been: Technology Services (452 vs. 384), Commercial Services (447 vs. 389), Consumer Services (240 vs. 193), Retail Trade (116 vs. 69), and Industrial Services (133 vs. 95). 16 of the 21 sectors tracked by FactSet Mergerstat posted relative gains in deal flow over the last three months compared to the same three months one year prior.

U.K. firms were the biggest buyers of U.S. companies in September. They announced 27 deals for the month, with Canadian companies in second with 23 deals, followed by Germany, Japan and Sweden. The largest deal to purchase a U.S. business was Germany-based Merk KGaA agreeing to acquire Sigma-Aldrich Corp. for $16.7 billion. U.K. firms were the biggest sellers to U.S. firms with 43 deals, followed by Canada, Australia and The Netherlands. The largest U.S. deal to acquire of a foreign company was Microsoft Corp. agreeing to acquire Sweden-based Mojang AB for $2.5 billion.

Access the data behind these trends, and more, with FactSet's new standard Mergers DataFeed. Included in the feed is global M&A information for nearly 500,000 announced mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and spinoffs involving both public and private companies with U.S. history from 1992, European major markets from 2000, Global from 2002. The Mergers DataFeed is compatible with FactSet's symbology, allowing you to link between other feeds using a standard entity identifier.

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