If it goes ahead, AB InBev’s $90bn-plus (£58bn) takeover bid for SABMiller would be the largest deal in a resurgent year for mergers and acquisitions, as corporates take advantage of low global interest rates and relatively benign markets.
US deal values, lifted by several large pharmaceutical deals, are already close – at $1.5tn – to the record total set in 2000 of $1.56tn and globally the value of dealmaking is fast approaching levels last seen before the financial crisis in 2007.
Despite faltering growth in the eurozone, the prospect of higher global interest rates and the more dramatic market fluctuations in China, investment bankers say conditions are right for a continuing merger boom.
“There’s appetite and confidence among corporates to make strategic moves,” said one banker. Bankers also say that the use of quantitative easing in Europe has made relative values historically attractive between international and European companies.
The UK has not seen as big a deal surge as the US, but if the SABMiller tie-up goes ahead it will put deal values up to $320bn, which is approaching 2008 levels and not far short of 2007.
The biggest ever global deal was in 1999 when Vodafone bid $172bn for the German group Mannesmann.
