Analysis | China SOE deals help push Asia M&A activity to new record in 2014

Regional mergers and acquisitions hit a record high last year, spurred by low borrowing interest rates and a private equity sector keen to offload earlier investments as the global economy picked up pace post financial crisis.

In all, 3,250 deals worth a total of US$591.6 billion - up 43.3 per cent from 2013, topped by several state-owned enterprise mergers - marked the busiest ever deal-making year for the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, according to research group Mergermarket's annual market report.

"Particularly over the past few years, the story was Asian conglomerates were targets, but now they are acquirers," said Mergermarket Asia-Pacific editor Mai Mizuta, citing last month's Thai Union Frozen Products' US$1.5 billion acquisition of US-based Bumble Bee Seafoods as an example.

The most active region globally was the United States, where M&A deals were up 56.6 per cent on 2013 at US$1.4 trillion, aided by several mega telecommunication mergers and a 158.5 per cent increase in inbound investment, the majority from fast-growing emerging markets.

Global deal flow, which at US$3.2 trillion still lagged the US$3.6 trillion hit in 2007, had almost doubled since stock markets bottomed out in mid-2009, Mergermarket said.

Deals worth nearly US$500 billion were attributed to private equity managers exiting their holdings after waiting for corporate valuations to recover from earlier lows.