M&A Market Heats Up in First Half of 2010
Deal Activity Up 52% and Transaction Value Rises Nearly 300% over 1H 2009
June 30, 2010JEGI's activity reflected the increasing deal pace, as the firm completed 10 M&A transactions in the first half of the year, including Hearst Corporation's acquisition of global interactive marketing services and technology company iCrossing.
The sharp rise in market deal value was driven by several multi‐billion dollar transactions announced in Q2 2010, including Madison Dearborn Partners' acquisition of credit and information management company TransUnion for an estimated $2.5 billion and the acquisition by Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus of financial information provider Interactive Data Corporation for $3.2 billion.
Overall, six market sectors saw strong growth in M&A in the first half: B2B Online Media (number of deals up nearly 4x), B2C Online Media (+64%), Business‐to‐Business Media (up nearly 4x), Database & Information Services (+90%), Marketing & Interactive Services (+96%), and Mobile Media & Technology (+188%).
Interactive media, marketing services and digital and mobile technology continue to propel deal flow, as the B2B and B2C Online Media & Technology, Marketing & Interactive Services, and Mobile Media & Technology sectors accounted for 74% of total deal activity in the first half of 2010.
Large interactive, marketing services and technology companies continued to be active acquirers, including Acxiom, Akamai, Alliance Data Systems, Apple, Facebook, Google, GSI Commerce, IAC, IBM, InfoSpace, Interpublic, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Publicis Groupe, Salesforce.com, Twitter, WPP, Yahoo, and Zynga.
The largest deals announced by this group in the second quarter included IBM's acquisition of Coremetrics, the web analytics and digital marketing optimization company, for an estimated $150 million; Salesforce.com's acquisition of Jigsaw Data Corp., an online business contact database, for $142 million; Alliance Data System's acquisition of Equifax's Direct Marketing Services division for $117 million; and Yahoo's acquisition of online content publisher Associated Content for a reported $90 million. However, average deal sizes for the interactive markets remained relatively small, averaging $23 million vs. an average deal size of $47 million for the overall media marketplace.



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