The total value of global technology acquisitions soared by 157% year on year in January 2021, according to data from research and analytics firm GlobalData.
Global tech acquisitions completed in January this year totalled 518 with a combined value of $53.95bn.
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That’s up from 504 completed in January 2020, which had a total tech acquisition value of $20.96bn.
According to GlobalData’s deals database, the majority of January tech acquisitions were in North America, with the region racking up a total of 301 deals.
Europe was the second-most popular location for tech acquisitions with a total of 155.
The largest tech acquisition in January 2021 was the London Stock Exchange buying financial market intelligence firm Refinitiv for $27bn.
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By GlobalDataThat was followed by The Arab Investment Bank acquiring Swiss enterprise software maker Temenos for $11.21bn.
Coming in at number three was Google’s acquisition of wearables maker Fitbit. While it was first announced in November 2019, the deal came under close regulatory scrutiny due to Google’s dominant market position.
The deal was completed after Google made “binding commitments” that it won’t use health and wellness data for advertising purposes.
Other notable January tech acquisitions include application services firm F5 Networks buying multi-cloud startup Volterra for $500m. The deal is aimed at giving F5 a boost for its ‘edge 2.0’ platform offering.
It’s a month that also included enterprise software company ServiceNow acquiring artificial intelligence startup Element AI for an undisclosed fee, although reports have priced Element at $500m. This would make it ServiceNow’s largest acquisition to date.
The majority of acquisitions were in the artificial intelligence space, with internet of things and digital media companies also top acquisition targets.
The top advisors by deal value to January acquisitions were Evercore, Morgan Stanley and Centerview Partners.
GlobalData is Verdict’s parent company.
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