Mergers and acquisitions

"Greece's return to the markets, or the recovery of confidence" could have been the title of the survey of company mergers and acquisitions in Greece last year, said Kyriakos Andreou, partner and chief analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers Greece at the start of the annual report's presentation on Tuesday in Athens.

Mergers and acquisitions picked up in Greece last year as an improving investment climate led to increased deals, according to figures from business consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers on Tuesday.

The supermarket sector anticipates a year of developments in 2020, after fierce competition in 2019 that saw turnover rise 3.2 percent from 2018.

The volume of mergers and acquisitions (M &A) transactions in Turkey, including unclosed ones, reached $5 billion in 2019, said audit and consulting giant Ernst & Young (EY) on Jan. 7.

Last year's volume was down on an annual basis, as high-volume transactions were replaced by medium- and low-volume transactions, said the EY Turkey report.

This year's mergers and acquisitions have seen an increase in the total value of transactions. Provisional data show that, in the first 11 months of the year, transactions already completed add up to more than those recorded over the full 12 months of 2018.

Demand for properties from potential foreign buyers has this year soared 25 percent compared to 2018, according to an analysis by property ad website Spitogatos. The driving force behind this flurry of investments in the local realty market is made up of Americans, Germans and British house-hunters, with the Dutch behind them.

The merger plan for the absorption of Grivalia Properties by Eurobank was approved on Friday by the general meetings of the two Athens-listed companies. This is set to lead to the capital strengthening of the credit group and the speedier reduction of its nonperforming loans.

The number of mergers and acquisitions (M & A) in Bulgaria doubled in the first half of last year compared to the same period in 2017 and the leading investor in our country are companies registered in South Africa. Also between January and June, Bulgaria is part of two of the top 10 of the largest transactions for the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region, reports money.bg

Supermarket sector officials are anticipating an average turnover increase of 0.5 percent year-on-year over the first six months of 2019, based on developments in the retail domain and expectations of capitalization in sales and profit terms following the mergers and acquisitions of recent years, according to a survey by the Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA).

Greek shipowners have invested more than $10.4 billion in vessel acquisitions in the year to date, according to shipbroker data.

Allied Shipbroking reports that the value of used ships acquired within 2018 has already reached $4.368 billion, while Golden Destiny said that the value of newbuilds ordered up until October amounted to $6.07 billion.