Merger deals up by 11% on 2013, says A&L Goodbody review

There were 41 merger deals notified to the competition authority last year, an increase of 11 per cent on 2013, according to a review published by law firm A&L Goodbody. This marks a significant increase on the 27 deals in 2009.

The Merger Notifications Review highlighted a 52 per cent rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions reported to the authority between 2009 and 2014.

While trade buyers continued to dominate the market, the number of private equity deals showed a significant increase in 2014, representing 34 per cent (14 deals) of overall M&A activity last year.

New rules

Dr Vincent Power, head of EU, competition and procurement at A&L Goodbody, said the firm anticipated a substantial increase in notification activity in 2015 given the introduction of new rules in 2014.

“The reduction in the thresholds means that more mergers and acquisitions will have to be notified . . . directors must now be more careful to scrutinise deals to see if they are notifiable because the thresholds for compulsory notifications have reduced,” he said.

A&L Goodbody said the Irish Competition Authority (now called the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission) had blocked just three merger transactions since 2003.

The deals prohibited were IBM-Schlumberger, Kerry-Breeo and Kingspan-Xtratherm.

More than 600 deals have been reviewed by the authority during that time.