A new class of Chinese dealmaker has joined the global heavyweights of mergers and acquisitions — business leaders with the connections, confidence and backing to pursue their own multibillion-dollar takeovers, and even gatecrash others.
In an otherwise lacklustre quarter for M&A activity, it was the bids and bargaining from China’s biggest companies that drove the country’s cross-border deals to record highs, even as previously red-hot US takeover activity fell to a two-year low.
China’s appetite for overseas assets helped push the overall value of cross-border M&A to $311bn — representing a record 46 per cent of the $682bn in deals in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. Chinese deals, at $101bn, accounted for roughly a third of that cross-border activity, an all-time high.