2011 Asian M&A

Clifford Chance looks into its crystal ball (i.e. it's 2010 Asian M&A Survey) and suggests that the short-term future of M&A in Asia is bright. 

And our respondents believe this trend will continue. More than 70% expect cross-border outbound M&A from strategic acquirers based in the Asia-Pacific region as well as intraregional M&A within the Asia-Pacific region to show an increase on last year.  Even those who are not as bullish expect that it will stay at the same level with only 2% predicting cross-border outbound M&A will decrease year-on-year and only 1% predicting intra-Asia-Pacific M&A will drop compared with last year.

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Mirroring the activity to date most of our respondents expect China to be home to the most buy-side activity: 62% of our respondents named China as the country that will produce the maximum number of investors and acquirers.  During the next 12 to 18 month period and a whopping 85% named China in their top three.

Almost as if on queue, there are concerns that Chinese investors might be lining up to take a large bloc of GM's IPO.

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