Finance and insurance driving offshore M&A

Law firm Appleby’s review of the offshore market has found that finance and insurance transactions are powering the offshore M&A market.

According to Appleby’s review of the M&A landscape, 168 deals occurred in the finance and insurance space during the second quarter of 2013, with a combined value of $10 billion. This was a considerable increase in deal activity compared with the first quarter of the year, when 147 deals to the tune of $6.5 billion were transacted.

The law firm found that minority deals predominated during the second quarter of 2013, with investors taking a cautious approach to acquisition. The report found that minority stake transactions accounted for 295 of the reported 493 deals during the quarter, accounting for $11.5 billion of the $31.6 billion in total. Appleby said that the average deal size was $64 million, with only three deals topping $1 billion.

The report found “more money spent where offshore companies were acquirers than where they were targets”, suggesting offshore domiciles such as Bermuda are in a position of relative strength in the M&A market.

Appleby also reported an increasingly bullish IPO market, with 17 deals with a cumulative value of $2.4 billion being transacted during the quarter.

The top domicile in terms of M&A transaction activity was Cayman, according to the report.