MALAYSIA A MATURED MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS MARKET

By Zakaria Abdul Wahab

SINGAPORE, Dec 14 (Bernama) - A study by a British university said Malaysia
is one of the Southeast Asian countries that is now considered as a matured
market for merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions.

The study by the Mergers and Acquisitions Research Centre (MARC) at Cass
Business School, which is part of City University London, said Malaysia scored
better than BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the M&A
rankings, taking 23rd spot out of 175 countries that were assessed.

Ernst & Young's Transaction Advisory Services Leader for Singapore and
Southeast Asia Harsha Basnayake said:"Southeast Asian countries are once again
emerging as interesting markets from an M&A perspective."

He said Malaysia together with Singapore and Thailand scored better than
some of the BRIC countries that were typically mentioned in analysis concerning
major emerging markets, though the smaller size of the countries and their
markets was an added factor for their success.

The MARC M&A Maturity index study, sponsored by Ernst & Young, and its
findings released here today said Asia was emerging as the most favorable region
for global M&A activity outside the traditional Western markets.

The traditional bases for M&A activity are Canada, United Kingdom, United
States and Japan, which topped the latest rankings.

The study assessed the risks and opportunities present in territories across
the world based on six factors: economic, financial, political, regulatory,
socio-cultural and technological.

Each category has a number of sub-factors, weighted to provide an overall
score on a scale of one to five, with one being fully mature for M&A purposes.

Malaysia had a score of 1.7 for economic factor, better than second-ranked
UK (2.0) and third-ranked US (1.9).

For financial, Malaysia scored 1.8, also superior than UK and US which both
scored 2.0, political (2.3), regulatory (2.1), socio-cultural
(2.7) and technological (2.0).

The study said one of the more counter-intuitive findings from the study was
that more M&A deals tended to occur when political instability was high, but
only in transitional markets.

However, the political environment and technological development had
virtually no differentiating effect on M&A in mature markets where
socio-cultural factors were critical drivers, it added.
-- BERNAMA


Attachments:
untitled-[2] 5.9 k [ text/html ] Download | View
Delete & Prev | Delete & Next