M&A leader eyes growth in the region

Asia's thriving market for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) will probably bounce back from the global credit concerns that were triggered by defaults in the United States subprime mortgage market last month, said PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner David Brown.

'The concerns are likely to have less of an impact in this part of the world, and one reason is that deals here tend to be not so highly leveraged and smaller, so they are less dependent on aggressive debt financing,' said Mr Brown, the company's Hong Kong-based M&A specialist.

According to Thomson Financial, PwC ranked at the top of the transaction table of financial advisers that completed M&A deals last year in volume - testimony to a service directed at putting domestic and middle market deals together while leaving the mega-mergers to its larger investment banking rivals. The company was a financial adviser for 189 deals last year, outranking second placed Nomura and its big-four rival KPMG Corporate Finance, which acted in 120 deals (see table).

Bringing the deals to the table, Mr Brown said, was a team of 1,400 country-focused transaction specialists in every major location in the Asia-Pacific, with a concentration in China/Hong Kong (261) and South Korea (230).

Mr Brown said in the mainland and Hong Kong PwC had more than 200 people working on M&A deals, 75 per cent of whom were based in the mainland and might have 30 to 40 transactions under way simultaneously.

'As a result we can provide clients with a perspective. We can tell them what the rules say and quantify potential exposure.