The Ireland Half Year M&A Review 2024, published by William Fry and Mergermarket, provides a comprehensive overview of developments in the Irish M&A market during the first half of 2024 and offers an outlook for the months ahead.

Highlights include:

• Irish M&A volume slows amid caution from dealmakers. Against a background of macroeconomic volatility and geopolitical tension, the number of transactions in Ireland declined 20% year-on-year to 185 deals in the first six months of 2024.
• Megadeals drive large increase in deal value. In contrast to deal volume, the €17.8bn-worth of transactions recorded during the first half of the year represented a 207% increase on the same period in 2023. The total was lifted by eight transactions at the upper end of the market – deals worth more than €250m. That figure included the largest deal of the year so far, which saw buyout firm Apollo Global Management agree to pay €10.1bn to acquire a 49% stake from chipmaker Intel in a joint venture entity related to Fab 34, Intel’s high-volume chip manufacturing facility based in Leixlip, Ireland.
• Ireland remains an attractive proposition for international acquirers. Well over half of all Irish deals in H1 2024 involved overseas bidders with a strong spread of international acquirers including traditional powerhouses such as the US and UK as well as Sweden, whose businesses transacted two of the top fifteen deals of the year so far.
• Private equity makes significant contribution. Private equity accounted for 19% of all deal activity in Ireland in H1 2024, with volume falling by 19% – in line with a similar decrease in trade buyer deal volume. However, the aggregate deal value of private equity rose by 585% year-on-year. The lion’s share of that impressive value increase was from the Apollo/Intel joint venture.

The report is also available at williamfry.com