January 28 (SeeNews) - The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market in Albania increased fourfold in terms of deal volume last year, making it the leader in Southeast Europe, a recent report by law firm CMS published in cooperation with news and market research provider EMIS, showed.
Serbia ranked second with an increase of 40% in deal activity, according to the Emerging Europe M&A Report 2018/19. The report provides deal statistics from across 15 emerging markets - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.
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The region's deal value sees a 12.5% increase year on year, hitting a total of 80.5 billion euro ($91.87 billion) in 2018, the report showed. Deal volume, however, remained flattish with a 0.9% decrease from 2017.
Telecoms & IT was the sector with the highest total deal value at 18.18 billion euro, while real estate remains the most active sector with 432 deals, up 10.8% from 2017.
The top foreign investor by volume was the U.S. (89 deals), while the UK is the top foreign investor in terms of value (9.77 billion euro). Russia was the most active investor from within the region in terms of both value andnumber of deals.
The biggest deal in the region last year was the sale of the operations of US TV and broadband company Liberty Global in the region.
In May 2018 Liberty Global said it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its operations in Romania, Czechia, Hungary and Germany to Vodafone Group for 18.4 billion euro.
($=0.8762 euro)