Canadian Corporate: Cannibals Eat More
2006Barry Weisleder 2006-12The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of December 2006 is not held.
by Barry Weisleder / December 2006
"Canadian companies continued to be more acquisitive of foreign companies than vice versa, with Canadian firms buying 363 foreign companies in the first nine months of the year, compared with 138 foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies."
Canadian mergers and acquisitions totalled $90.3-billion in the third quarter, shattering a quarterly record dating back to the peak of the technology boom, Crosbie & Co. Inc. stated on November 22.
In its quarterly report on Canadian mergers and acquisitions, the Toronto-based investment bank said the third-quarter total eclipsed the previous record of $79.1 billion set in the second quarter of 2000. It surpassed the $68.9 billion of deals in the second quarter this year and was almost double the $53.7 billion in the year-earlier third quarter.
The third-quarter numbers got a big boost from the $19.9 billion takeover of Inco Ltd. by Brazil's Compania Vale do Rio Doce. But that wasn't the only big deal in the quarter: Crosbie said there were 18 transactions valued at more than $1 billion, accounting for $69.8 billion in value, up from 10 such mega-deals worth $45.2-billion in the second quarter, and 12 mega-deals worth $36.4 billion a year earlier.
In total, there were 420 M&A transactions in the Canadian market in the third quarter, compared with 517 in the second quarter and 398 in the year-earlier period. The energy sector was the busiest for M&A activity in the quarter, with 91 transactions. The sector ranked second by value, at $17 billion. The base-metals sector had the highest value, $23.8 billion on 55 deals, led by the Inco takeover. The gold group had 14 transactions valued at $15.1 billion.
In the technology sector, "M&A activity was more brisk this quarter than it has been for some time," Crosbie noted. The sector had 26 deals totalling $7.6 billion, "a level not seen since the tech boom era in 2001."