M&A deals drop in first half '09: report

Merger and acquisition deals in the global asset management industry fell in the first half of the year, and although unsteady, they are expected to come out of crisis toward recovery in the second half.

New York-based Jefferies Putnam Lovell, the investment banking group of Jefferies & Company, said that there were only 73 transactions in the investment management industry in the first-half of 2009, against 109 in the same  period a year-earlier.

Without the June blockbuster BlackRock purchase of Barclays Global Investors, which has assets under management of  $1.5 trillion, is the second-largest deal with a valuation of $13.5 billion, though the deal value and managed assets transacted would have been far lower.

The total BlackRock - BGI deal value was $14.1 billion in the first-half of 2009, (See: BlackRock to acquire Barclays Global Investors for $13.5 billion) while managed assets transacted totalled $2.3 trillion. 

Jefferies said that the comparable totals a year earlier were $7.7 billion in deal value and $588 billion in assets under management changing hands.

Notably, the median deal size was under $1 billion of assets under management transacted for the first six months of 2009, marking the first time since the 1990s that the median transaction size fell below $1 billion in a six-month period.