|By TAP Staff| MENA M&A market showed no signs of improvement in the third quarter, with the total value of transactions remaining less than $3 billion, according to the latest MENA Research Partners report.
This is well below the average levels of the past 6 years and the trend has depressed the average deal sizes.
From a geographic perspective, while deal activity remains largely driven by a strong performance in GCC, most of the completed deals were in non-GCC countries, indicating the weaknesses within the oil exporting countries. In fact, the GCC region accounted during the past 3 months for only 45% and 44% respectively of the announced value and the volume of completed deals.
In terms of deal attitude, minority acquisitions accounted for most of the number of the regional deals during 9m2015, sustaining their lead over the past years relative to majority deals. This is in line with the general perception that regional investors are less reluctant to give up control of their business.