Transactions totaling nearly $154 billion
It’s a funny one years of tech business M&A, one in which most of the activity comes from private equity firms: As the value of tech stocks declines throughout the year, these companies hunt for bargains. They have seen companies with many advantages undervalued in extreme market conditions in 2022.
But strangely enough, the year started with Microsoft announcing it’s the acquisition of Activision Blizzard with a staggering $69 billion in January, followed in April by Twitter is sold to Elon Musk for $44 billion. However, neither of those deals made the list – they’re not really corporate companies. But they have shown promise and big money is rolling out this year.
After you discount those deals, the top two still involve companies acquiring desirable assets for large sums of money, but the majority of the top 10 deals are dominated by that private equity interest, with Thoma Bravo in three of the top 10 and Vista Equity Partners in two. According to Crunchbase, Thoma has aggregated six multi-billion dollar transactions by 2022 and Vista three. That’s a lot of action in a year.
Consider that Google buys Mandiant for $5.4 billion and Intel nabbing Tower Semiconductor for the same price not even on the list. This year requires at least $6 billion to make the top 10. This is up from $5.4 billion last year and $3.5 billion in 2020. This year’s deals total 153, 9 billion dollars, compared to $121 billion in 2021 and $165 billion in 2020a year where a bunch of chip companies changed hands a period of consolidation for industry.
We’ve seen a flurry of small deals – literally small in terms of M&A money – as companies attract smaller startups. Transactions not on this list but include Celonis buys Process Analytics Factory for $100 million and Snowflakes get Streamlit for $800 million. Many other transactions are so small that companies do not have to disclose purchase prices, such as IBM buys Envizi or Zoom buys Solvvy.
A few major deals have died on the vine this year, with Nvidia left from a $40 billion offer to buy Arm after it came under intense regulatory scrutiny. Also, Zendesk eliminated his efforts to buy the momentcompany behind SurveyMonkey, for $4.1 billion after The investor rejected the deal. Eventually, Zendesk will be acquired and shortlisted on our list.
Some of the deals on this list are facing tight regulatory scrutiny, including the top two, so it remains to be seen whether all of these will make it to their destination. or join Nvidia in choosing to avoid costs against a government entity. in the US, UK or EU. That could be the true M&A legacy of 2022, but time will tell.
Without further ado, here are the top 10 corporate M&A deals of 2022:
ten. OpenText acquires Micro Focus for $6 billion
Not a big deal in the plan of things—a legacy software company buying a legacy software company—and to be honest, Micro Focus itself has acquired a bunch of legacy titles in the past. over the years, including Borland and Novell. It also partnered with HPE in 2016 in an $8 billion deal. As noted on the deal when it was announced, it’s not about building a portfolio with a compatible product but simply getting bigger. Still, it’s still good for the 10th spot on this year’s list.
