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European M&A deals boom
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December 23, 1999: 7:12 a.m. ET
Transactions more than doubled to $1.2 trillion in '99, spurred by euro
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LONDON (CNNfn) - For European dealmakers, the world was not enough in 1999. Merger and acquisition activity in the Old World took on New World trappings, more than doubling to $1.21 trillion in the biggest one-year surge ever seen in the region, according to a new survey.
With a growing appetite for cross-border tie-ups spurred by the launch of a new single currency and accelerating deregulation, Europe's M&A architects hatched 37 percent of the world's $3.317 trillion in deals in 1999, Thomson Financial Securities Data concluded in a preliminary survey. A final report is due out at the end of the year.
The European M&A portfolio included the largest takeover approach in history: Vodafone AirTouch's $149 billion hostile offer for Germany's Mannesmann, formally launched on Thursday.
The surge underscored the pressure European firms are under to forge alliances with rivals beyond their own borders as consolidation sweeps industries from telecommunications to finance.
Separately, Thomson reported that Asian M&A activity soared 41 percent in 1999 to a record $82 billion, as the region recovered from last year's economic meltdown. Most of the activity derived from intra-Asian takeovers, rather than incursions by companies outside the region.
Europe was the venue for three of the world's top five deals in the fourth quarter. For the year, Europe played host to 21 combinations with a value of more than $10 billion, among them Olivetti’s purchase of Telecom Italia and the partially successful bid by Banque Nationale de Paris for French rivals Paribas and Société Générale.
The U.K. led the European pack with $386 billion in deals, with Germany ranked second at $261 billion, then France at $163 billion.
The meteoric strides in European merger activity flew in the face of some analysts’ predictions a year ago for a more moderate pace of M&A action in 1999, following last year's global tally of $2.6 trillion. Those included historic alliances in the telecommunications, financial and media sectors, flagged by AT&T's deal with Telecommunications Inc. and, in the banking sector, the record-breaking union of Citigroup and Travelers Group.
In the fourth quarter, Europe grabbed a 38.9 percent slice of the global M&A market, with $409 billion, trailing the U.S. with $543 billion. The European market jumped 39 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, while the blazing U.S. market rocketed by a record-breaking 69 percent quarter-to-quarter, following a noticeable slowdown in the third quarter.
U.S. investment banks claimed the lion's share of deals in Europe, dominating the M&A landscape.
Goldman Sachs topped the region’s takeover charts by value of transactions, advising on 147 deals worth a total of $709 billion - some 46 percent of the overall value of European M&A in 1999. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter was in second place, with a hand in 182 deals worth $655 billion, or nearly 43 percent of the market. Merrill Lynch worked on deals worth $525 billion (34 percent) while JP Morgan was an adviser on transactions valued at $401 billion (26 percent).
One of the largest European investment banks, Germany's Deutsche Bank, ranked eighth, with just under $220 billion in deals, or 14 percent of total merger activity.
The last year of the century was also the year of the hostile deal, with more than 15 percent of total M&A activity, or about $485 billion, stemming from offers that had been rejected outright by the target company's board of directors. 
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European Union
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