January 16 (SeeNews) - Romania's mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market is expected to register some 100 deals this year, while transactions involving non-performing loans (NPLs) will further decrease, global consultancy Deloitte said on Wednesday.
The M&A trend predicted for 2019 is similar to that of the 2008-2018 period, Deloitte said in a press release.
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The average value of a deal is forecast at 40 to 50 million euro ($46-57 million) in 2019, slightly above the average of 40 million euro in the past 10 years.
"Despite the harsh fiscal stance of early 2019, we do not expect major consequences on the merger and acquisitions market in the first half of this year, but rather towards the end of the year when, depending on the macroeconomic context, the window of opportunity could close," Deloitte Romania M&A consultant partner, Ioana Filipescu, said.
The most dynamic sectors of the M&A market in 2019 will be technology, retail, pharmaceutical and medical services, consumer goods and real estate, Filipescu added.
Transactions with NPLs are expected to further decrease this year, following their sharp drop to 1 billion euro in 2018 from 2.1 billion euro in 2017.
"The significant decrease in the volume of NPL transactions in 2018 is the result of a reduction of the volume of non-performing loans and legislative changes. We are still expecting a decrease in the volume of NPL portfolio transactions in 2019, given the current context, although banks have a non-performing credit balance sheet estimated at 3-4 billion euro, as well as a similar off-balance sheet volume," Deloitte Romania partner at support services for transactions, Radu Dumitrescu, said.
In 2018, Deloitte estimated the value of Romania's M&A market at 3.8 to 4.3 billion euro, including the deals whose values were not disclosed, which were significantly more compared to previous years. The market for reported value transactions continued to be dominated by strategic investors, which were involved in 56% of transactions, while private equity firms generated some 39% of the volume of the deals with a disclosed value.
($ =0.8517 euro)
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