October 21 (SeeNews) - The size of Romania's mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market, excluding cross-border deals, fell by 24% in terms of value to an estimated $578 million (450.6 million euro) in the first half of 2014, Ernst&Young (E&Y) said on Tuesday.
The Romanian M&A market was dominated by domestic transactions in the first half of the year, which accounted for 66% of total deals, E&Y said in its Romania M&A Barometer H1 2014.
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"As the most important trend in the market, we have noted the consolidation of the energy sector, with the main focus on the renewable segment. The photovoltaic and the small hydropower plants covered half of the deals from the energy sector closed in the first semester of 2014," E&Y said.
The largest transaction was the acquisition of a 25 megawatt photovoltaic park in the central county of Sibiu by China's Sunowe Photovoltaic for $55.1 million.
The number of M&A transactions fell to 61 from 75 a year earlier. The top M&A sectors in Romania were IT with 9 deals, telecom and media with 7 deals and services with 7 transactions.
In terms of value, the largest transactions took place in the energy and mining industry, with $29.2 million, transportation with $17.3 million and banking and financial services with $16.7 million.
The transaction value was disclosed for 23 deals, resulting in a disclosure rate of 38%, down by six percentage points compared to the first half of 2013.
($ = 0.7797 euro)