Transactions Blog

In a recent report, ‘M&A: Down but not Out’, by Boston Consulting Group and UBS based on interviews with chief executives of 164 publicly listed European companies, deal activity is predicted to increase.

This is in part due to the need for consolidation in some industries, the attractive price of assets and struggling companies needing new ownership.

The outlook for the mergers and acquisitions market in 2009 is therefore not all negative, although difficulties in securing bank debt looks set to continue. Locally there still appears to be a good appetite from funders for quality mid-market transactions.

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Your company acquired several businesses over the last year and you know that not all of your synergy targets and potential have been achieved? In that case, we strongly recommend completing the unfinished business.

The precedent 3 to 5 years were marked by an unparalleled frenetic M&A activity illustrated by many large corporations who acquired each several companies in that time period or even within a year.  Thereby, a certain level of integration has been clearly achieved for those acquisitions, but we observe that in most cases, these have not been completed, as management already looked out to the next acquisition. 

This is no longer acceptable in today’s economic circumstances. In the rush of cost savings to face the dramatic economic crisis, companies have their last chance to complete their unfinished business. Typical unfinished integration areas are:

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Cross-border reorganisations: implementation of EUMerger Directive into Belgian tax law

On 12 January 2009, the act implementing the EU Merger Directive into Belgian tax law was published in the Belgian official gazette. Most of the new act’s provisions are applicable immediately as of its date of publication. The act introduces a tax-neutral regime for cross-border reorganisations and also brings the existing tax provisions applicable to purely Belgian reorganisations in line with the EU Merger Directive.
The purpose of this newsletter is to comment on the changes made by the new act and give you an insight into the opportunities now available to your organisation in respect of cross-border mergers.

Read the full Transactions newsalert (pdf)