Oil and gas continues to be the most active sector when it comes to deal making in the beginning of 2019 according to the latest Deals+ update from Anderson Anderson & Brown Corporate Finance (link).
Having said that deal flow has remained steady for all sectors although the market conditions in various sectors are very much depicted by the wider political environment.
From an Oil & Gas perspective, there continues to be significant M&A activity in the upstream E&P space with a number of ongoing high-profile sales processes.
Recent transactions completed during Q1 2019 include RockRose’s acquisition of Marathon Oil’s UK business for £107m and DNO’s hostile takeover of Faroe Petroleum for £641m.
Deal activity in the Oil & Gas services market also continues to show good recovery, with deals
in the last quarter including First Reserve’s £275m acquisition of Weir Group’s flow control division and Global Energy Group buying Apollo Offshore Engineering and Aiken Group in the space of a week.
In the construction sector we also saw a number of stellar deals completed in Q1 2019, including the £31m acquisition of Walker Homes by Springfield Properties and the MBO of CMS Window Systems backed by Maven Capital Partners.
Fund-raising activity in Q1 2019 was led by a number of emerging technology companies, including Administrate raising £3.78m and Swipii Labs raising £1.9m.
A stand-out deal during the quarter was the seven figure investment in Project Heather to support the re-launch of the Scottish Stock Exchange after almost fifty years.
Read this story – AAB secure investment to re-launch the Scottish Stock Exchange
