A record year on the M&A market
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polski
The year 2021 can be described as mergers and acquisitions. At that time, a record number of acquired companies was recorded on the Polish market, and the Media/IT/Telecom sector was responsible for 26% of all transactions.
During the 12 months of 2021, 328 mergers and acquisitions took place on the Polish market, which is an increase of 43% compared to 2020. The media/IT/telecommunications sector should be distinguished here, which was then responsible for 26% of all transactions on the Polish market. The second largest FMCG industry accounted for a further 11% of transactions, and the biotechnology, health and industrial sectors for another 9%.
The largest transaction in terms of value in 2021 was the acquisition of an entity operating in the insurance market. Allianz SE was acquired by Aviva Poland for approximately PLN 11.7 billion. On the other hand, in the telecommunications sector the following transactions should be singled out: Polkomtel Infrastruktura from Cellnex Telecom for PLN 7.1 billion, and the purchase of UPC Polska by Play Communications for PLN 7 billion.
Demand for digital services
However, for the authors of the report, the record number of M&A is not a big surprise. The COVID-19 pandemic and the related restrictions partially forced organizations to move their services online, and mergers and acquisitions were one of the ways to quickly adapt to the current situation. The data provided by Navigator Capital and Fordaty show that in 2021 over 31% of all acquired companies from the TMT sector were e-commerce solutions, which is an increase of over 80% compared to 2020.
“Even despite such a large increase in the total number of transactions, the TMT sector managed to significantly improve the last year’s result on the part of the acquired entities – from 22 percent. up to 26 percent This is an increase from 52 to as many as 85 completed M&A projects. This trend reflects the enormous importance of the adoption of digital technologies as one of the best ways to optimize processes in enterprises: relatively easy to integrate and highly scalable. At a time when one of the main factors hampering the growth of the IT sector today is the shrinking resources of specialists, the M&A process is also a way to provide companies with an inflow of new talents ”- comments Marcin Rajewicz, account manager at Fordata.
