Japan logs record number of foreign M&A in 2011
2012-02-27 17:38:43
The recent strong yen has prompted Japanese companies to aggressively buy overseas counterparts, resulting in a record number of merger and acquisition cases in 2011, the Cabinet Office said Monday.
The government said Japanese companies taking overseas firms totalled 455 cases in 2011, the largest number since 1996 when the oldest available data were available. The monetary value of the cases totals Y6.3 trillion.
A Cabinet Office official said many of these deals haven't reached a financial arrangement stage yet, meaning related yen-selling flows, if any, will hit the currency market from now on.
In its package to cope with the strong yen, the government last year established a credit line worth $43 billion between the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the three biggest Japanese commercial banks which firms can tap into when buying overseas companies.
The official said $1.4 billion was already taken, and the figure is expected to grow as more and more deals enter funding stages.
According to documents prepared by the government, the largest M&A deal last year was Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. buying its Swiss rival Nycomed for Y1.11 trillion, followed by Itochu Corp purchasing U.S.-based Samson Investment Co. with Y540 billion and Terumo Corp. taking CaridianBCT, a Swedish company, for Y216.3 billion.