March 14 (SeeNews) - The Romanian arm of global consultancy firm PwC said on Thursday that Romania's merger and acquisition (M&A) market saw 189 completed deals worth a total of 4.3 billion euro ($4.7 billion) last year, declining by around 20% from 5.2 billion euro in 2022.
The largest transaction of 2023 was the acquisition of Enel Romania by the Greek group PPC, valued at 1.3 billion euro, PwC Romania said in a press release.
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A total of 241 transactions valued at 7.7 billion euro were recorded last year, when taking into consideration both completed and non-finalised deals. Many deals signed in 2023 are anticipated to be finalised this year, including Mega Image's acquisition of the Profi network and UniCredit's acquisition of Alpha Bank.
The Romanian M&A market witnessed eight transactions exceeding 100 million euro each last year, indicating sustained investor interest in larger-value deals. Despite a decrease in transaction volume, the average deal value rose to 23 million euro, the highest since 2020. Strategic players accounted for 70% of transactions by number and 80% by value.
"While the number of transactions has decreased, we see that the average value of a transaction is higher than in the previous year. Romania has been reaffirmed for the fourth year in a row as a market where deals worth more than EUR 1 billion take place: CEZ in 2020, the two-stage deal involving Romgaz's acquisition of Neptun Deep in 2021 and 2022, Enel in 2023," said George Ureche, director and M&A leader of PwC Romania.
The first quarter of 2024 indicates that this year could also be a very promising one for Romania's M&A market, as several large deals have already been inked, added Dinu Bumbacea, country managing partner at PwC Romania.
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