Fears that higher interest rates would choke off private equity deals have proved unfounded. The Managed Services M&A market continues to showcase impressive deal volumes throughout 2024, reaching M&A highs last seen in 2022. Given the growth in cloud services and investment in AI, we expect to see high levels of acquisition continue into 2025 with growth and high recurring revenues driving further consolidation.
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Q3 2024 saw the largest number of UK Tech M&A deals since early last year, with 194 deals announced. This is a jump of 28% from Q323. Overseas buyers were particularly strong, accounting for 46% of all deals, reveals ICON's UK Tech M&A Snapshot Q3 2024.
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The first half of 2024 saw 364 deals announced in UK Tech M&A, a jump of 14% from H2 last year. With equity markets remaining strong, and interest rates looking set to fall, confidence has rebuilt in the M&A market, reveals ICON's UK Tech M&A Snapshot H1 2024.
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With cybersecurity public market and deal activity firmly back in the headlines, we are pleased to publish our latest cybersecurity sector report. Whilst stock markets have turned a corner, boosting M&A activity, fundraising is still lagging behind historic trends. In this report, we discuss the sector fundamentals and spotlight key investment themes, players, and valuation dynamics, focusing on the European market.
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UK Tech deals are showing real signs of recovery. With 193 deals closing in Q124, the number of M&A deals has risen for the second quarter in a row, reveals ICON's latest UK Tech M&A Snapshot. Having reached a low of 151 deals in Q323, the number of UK deals grew in Q423 and now again in Q124, up 16% quarter on quarter. That is nearly back to pre-COVID deal levels. Find out more detail from Q124 in our latest snapshot.
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Having impressively grown from start up to $9bn revenues in 20 years, ServiceNow has created huge, ongoing demand for specialists in its Partner ecosystem. That has fed strong demand for M&A activity amongst ServiceNow Partners who are in a hurry, with over 78 deals in the past 5 years. Interestingly, there was a big jump in ServiceNow Partner deals in UK in 2023 with the sale of Unifi, Sapphire, Proceed, Whyaye and Cloud Stratex. Our report looks into the M&A activity in the sector to see who is buying. Biggest serial acquirers include Accenture, EY and DXC.
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In 4Q23 we saw a considerable jump in equity markets and a small rise in M&A deals as investors re-assessed the future direction of interest rates. The rise from zero to 5% interest rates was incredibly quick. No one expects free money to return anytime soon but rates should drop in 2024. That is an encouraging backdrop. As a result, many advisers are expecting a bounce in M&A activity this year on the back of the growing market confidence. That seems to be happening on the ground, with ICON seeing a step change in new enquiries in Q1. That is all good, but what are UK Tech buyers really thinking? What is the appetite of buyers? We thought we would try and find out from the horse's mouth.
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Tech CEOs, VCs, corporate development personnel & lawyers alike are expecting a significant uptick in M&A activity in 2024. Our own conversations just in the past couple months point to a major change in sentiment. We expect an increase in activity among all acquirer classes, from publicly traded strategics, to PE & growth equity financial acquirers, sponsor-backed platforms & even an increase in unicorn M&A. To that end, ICON has decided to openly share our proprietary playbook that has been proven to yield premium M&A valuations.
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