Albeit muted for most part of the year, Deal Street in India has clocked M&As worth $ 29 billion in 2014 and expects the size to get larger with transactions worth over $40 billion in the new year.
Experts say that various reform measures promised by the new government, including on foreign investment caps, should accelerate the merger and acquisition activities in India in the new year which has remained somewhat subdued for last few years amid slackened economic growth momentum.
The Indian M&A activity in 2014 appears to have grown by a modest 9 per cent during 2014, as compared to 2013, according to global consultancy major PwC.
There have been little over 800 merger and acquisition (M&A) deals totalling $ 28.7 billion this year, as against about 850 deals worth $26.3 billion during 2013.
The most significant increase this year has been in the domestic M&A space which has almost doubled, while inbound and outbound M&As were down by 37 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.
The low outbound activity was largely because of stretched balance sheets of Indian companies, which are "under repair" at the moment, and hopefully a benign interest rate regime in 2015 would help, experts said, adding inbound activity suffered because most overseas investors are in wait mode for real reform activity before investing in India.