DEAL volumes suffered a 27 per cent decline in the first six months of this year in Northern Ireland as conditions in the wider macroeconomic environment took a substantial downturn this year, new figures show.
The latest mergers and acquisitions review by information services company Experian shows there were 93 transactions signed off between January and June – well down on the 128 deals done in the first half of 2021.
The value of those deals plunged too, with their total worth being £440 million compared to £489 million the previous year.
And the top three deals along made up around £370m of that total, according to the report.
In the north’s biggest transaction of the first half of the year, full fibre broadband firm Fibrus Networks secured a £220m funding package from a consortium comprising NatWest, ABN Amro, ING, Sabadell, LBBW and the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Fibrus, which is majority-owned by infrastructure investment fund Infracapital, intends to use the funds to accelerate its broadband roll-out across the region under its Project Stratum project.
Second biggest was the £100m investment by Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), a London-based specialist insurer of defined benefit pension funds, to help the north's third-largest housing association Apex to fast-track plans to build another 1,500 affordable homes and also to refinance its existing debt.
Elsewhere, London-based Plc Diploma acquired Medilink Services (NI), a Belfast-based medical equipment supplier, in a £51m deal from Dublin healthcare group Pharmed Holdings and Cookstown Cement, a management buy-out vehicle, acquired the Lafarge cement business from Swiss multinational Holcim for £57m.
M&A activity in the north has been driven by manufacturing deals so far this year with 33 deals, worth a combined £63m - the strongest first half year for the sector since 2016, with particularly brisk activity in food (six transactions), plastics and textiles (five deals each).
Tech businesses remain a fertile source of deal making locally, and despite the number of deals dropping by 22 per cent year on year, their value was up 2 per cent at £225m.
Most other sectors declined in both the volume and value compared to 2021, with the biggest falls coming in financial services, where deal volume was down by 52 per cent, utilities (down 55 per cent) and financial services (61 per cent).
Private equity provided funding in respect of 25 Northern Irish deals in the first half. Deals of note included a £2.2m ‘seed plus’ funding round for Belfast-based Sonrai Analytics, led by Forward Partners alongside institutional investors Techstart Ventures, Co-Fund NI (managed by Clarendon Fund Managers), QUBIS, and Angel Investors.
Invest NI was the north’s most active investment outfit, completing eight deals in H1, followed by Techstart with four and a handful of firms on two deals.
Most active legal advisers in Northern Ireland during the first half were A&L Goodbody with 26 deals, followed by Tughans (25) and Carson McDowell (17).
