The Asia-Pacific (ex Central Asia) led the market, with $82.3 billion of announced deal activity, representing 40.8 per cent share of the market. However, in terms of deal count, The Americas region led the market in deal count, with 3,902 deals for the first quarter of 2017, representing 36.9 per cent of the 10,568 deals announced worldwide.

Sector performance

The real estate sector performed well, comprising 17.6 per cent of announced value, followed by industrials and financials, with 13.3 per cent and 12.1 per cent of the total market, respectively. Jones Day toped the worldwide mid-market rankings for deals valued up to $500 million in the first quarter of 2017, working on 117 deals with a combined value of $2 billion.

Legal Small Cap M&A deals 

Similarly, worldwide announced legal small-cap M&A deals valued up to $50 million (including undisclosed value deals) also were down with total deals topping S$35.3 billion in the first quarter of 2017 – a 7.9 per cent decrease year-on-year. Again, the Asia-Pacific (ex Central Asia) region led this market, with $16.1 billion of announced deal activity.  The Americas led the market in the number of deals announced, with 3,575 transactions for the first quarter of 2017, representing 37.6 per cent of the 9,518 deals announced worldwide.

High tech topped polls

The high technology sector captured 14.3 per cent of total announced small-cap value deals, followed by real estate and industrials, each respectively registering 14.2 per cent and 12.6 per cent of the overall market.  Jones Day topped the worldwide legal small-cap rankings for deals valued up to $50 million for the first quarter of 2017, working on 106 deals with a combined value of $333.8 million.

Report

The findings are from the Thomson Reuters Mid-Market and Small-Cap M&A Legal Reviews for Q1 2017, which contains league table rankings on global, regional and single country levels, as well as Capital Markets Legal Advisory Review.