Grant Thornton sees slowdown in M&A activity on domestic as well as cross border side

Leading global tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton on Tuesday said that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) activity is witnessing a slowdown on domestic as well as cross border side.

According to the latest data from Grant Thornton's monthly deal tracker, August recorded 92 deals at a combined value of $3 billion and that is the lowest value recorded in the past six months.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Pankaj Chopda, the director said, "If you look at this months’ activity, private equity (PE) activity has been on the heavier side and M&A has slowed down. It has been $0.85 billion of M&A activity and $2.1 billion of PE activity."

"On the domestic side, you would see one large transaction and that is primarily the Adani taking over GMR Chhattisgarh power project,” he added.

Chopda further added, “Majority of the large ticket M&A transactions are where the corporates have sold in their stake and it is where the private equity guys have come in and bought the stakes. So that is where the majority of the PE activity has been."

"If you look at year to date (YTD) numbers, we are currently at about $45 billion. But the same number, if you look at in 2018, we would have been closer to around $70 billion. So, from that perspective, there is a slowdown in activity,” Chopda said.