January 8 (SeeNews) - The disclosed value of Romania's merger and acquisition (M&A) market fell to 1.7 billion euro ($1.9 billion) in 2019, from 1.9 billion euro in 2018, global consultancy Deloitte said on Wednesday.
Taking into account transactions with a still undisclosed value, the M&A market could reach an estimated 4 - 4.4 billion euro in 2019, up from an estimated 3.8 - 4.3 billion euro in 2018, Deloitte said in a press release.
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"2019 was a year of intense activity in the mergers and acquisitions market, with a record number of transactions throughout the last decade. After a weak start in a particular context, the market has recovered since the second quarter, and the total number of transactions jumped to over 100," Deloitte Romania corporate finance partner Ioana Filipescu Stamboli said.
"We note, however, that the tendency not to report transactions' value, has became more accentuated: only 24 transactions had communicated value. In this context, estimating the market value has become rather an indicative evaluation exercise for our team," Ioana Filipescu added.
In total, 110 transactions were announced in 2019, up from 98 in the previous year, including those whose value was not officially disclosed. Deloitte's analysis did not take into account transactions worth less than 5 million euro each.
The biggest transactions of the year 2019 were the acquisition by the PPF investment group of Central European Media Enterprises (CME) operations in Romania for an undisclosed sum and a $568 million (500 million euro) financing round obtained by UiPath, a robotic process automation startup founded in Romania, Deloitte said.
($=0.8984 euro)